Out Loud
by NachtaraPowers
Summary: Kaiba and Alistair are together...sort of. Many of the hot emotions that run below the surface remain unspoken, particularly when it comes to a certain blue-eyed CEO. A scandal that rocks Kaiba Corp becomes the catalyst in a series of events that put their relationship to the test. Sequel to Fire and Ice.
1. The More Things Change

**Hello dear reader, and welcome to _Out Loud_. Though most definitely a sequel to _Fire and Ice_, it's not imperative to have read _Fire and Ice_ to follow the story if you don't mind starting with our two protagonists already together (though not to worry; there's still _plenty_ of angst to sort out). **

**~The first chapter starts after the end of the _Grand Championship_ arc and before _Dawn of the Duel_ quite gets underway, directly following a duel between Kaiba and Bakura during which Bakura gives Kaiba the Millennium Eye after luring him into the duel by kidnapping Mokuba and knocking him out.~**

**Dislaimer: **This may come as a surprise, but I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! or any of the canon characters.

* * *

_"Ah, is it just me or does anybody see_

_The new and improved tomorrow isn't what it used to be_

_It's the same damn song with a different melody_

_You're still you and I'm still me."_

_~The More Things Change, _Bon Jovi

**Chapter 1**

Seto sped home, ignoring the honking of the other cars, the creepy golden eye he had received from the lunatic Bakura on the roof of Kaiba Corp headquarters forgotten; Mokuba was his only priority. If Bakura had hurt him in any way…

Alistair ran downstairs at the sound of Seto's car in the driveway. He'd called Seto several times because even Seto, the notorious workaholic, didn't spend _all_ night at Kaiba Corp and he had sensed that something was wrong, especially when Seto hadn't picked up his phone.

Seto got out of the car and retrieved Mokuba from the back, hefting the unconscious teen into his arms.

"What happened?" Alistair asked in concern having just flung the door connecting the garage to the house open. "You look like you've been up all night, and why didn't you answer your phone?"

"It's a long story," Seto answered distractedly. "Can you hold the door open?"

"Sure." He followed Seto up the stairs to Mokuba's room where Seto gently lay his brother on his bed before pulling up the desk chair and sitting beside him. It was only then that Alistair realized Mokuba wasn't merely asleep.

"What happened?" he repeated. Without looking at him, Seto explained how he'd thought the power at KC headquarters had gone out because of the storm when suddenly his computer had turned back on to play a message from one of his old classmates, Ryou Bakura, who had kidnapped Mokuba and knocked him out, demanding that Seto duel him or risk Mokuba getting hurt.

"We were in the middle of a duel when he tossed me this and disappeared." He produced the eye from his jacket pocket. Alistair looked over Seto's shoulder to see what he was holding and started.

"Isn't that the Millennium Eye?" he asked in shock. "I thought that belonged to Pegasus." Seto shrugged and stashed it back in his pocket.

"Who cares? That's not the important thing right now." He thought back to what Bakura had lectured him about during their duel. Why was it that everyone was so interested in the past that they couldn't focus on the present?

"You're right, I'm sorry. Do you think we should take him to the hospital?"

"No," Seto replied firmly; he hated and for the most part distrusted hospitals.

"And it never occurred to call me to tell me what was going on?" Alistair demanded hotly.

"I left my phone in my office." Alistair had a hard time believing that, but then again he supposed that the location of his cell phone would have been the last thing on Seto's mind at the time.

"I thought something had happened to you!" For the first time since he'd gotten home Seto turned to look at Alistair, who was glaring at him, and noticed the dark circles under his eyes.

"Did you wait up for me?"

"Of course; I always do."

"Why? It's not like I'm going to get lost on my way home," Seto said, rolling his eyes.

"You don't exactly take good care of yourself."

"What, so you're going to do it for me? How nice of you." He yawned. "Where's Trudy? I need a cup of coffee before I can go back to work."

"You're going back to work? You just stayed up all night!" Alistair's voice was exasperated.

"Kaiba Corp doesn't just run itself."

"I'm not an idiot!"

"Be quiet," Seto snapped, inclining his head towards Mokuba.

"Then don't talk down to me!"

"Don't you have your own job to go to? How are they supposed to manage without their literary expert to guide them?" Alistair ignored Seto's sarcastic jab about his job as a page at the Domino Public Library.

"I called in sick. Unlike you, I like to think that some things are more important than working." Seto flared his nostrils and stood up.

"If you're accusing me of caring about Kaiba Corp more than my little brother," he started, his face inches from Alistair's, "than you don't know me at all."

"I like to think I know you pretty well thanks," Alistair replied, his jaw set. "I wasn't saying that and you know it. I'm talking about your health. You came home for a while but ever since the end of the tournament you've been working yourself into the ground again and don't tell me you haven't been; I'm not the only one who's noticed. Why do you think Mokuba's been hanging around KC headquarters so much? It's the only time he gets to see you." He had promised Mokuba he wouldn't tell Seto that, but it was the only leverage he had. It had the desired effect.

Seto had wondered why Mokuba had taken sudden interest in the company, but looking back, all of his brother's visits had revolved around just sitting in his office while he worked. He regarded Mokuba's unconscious face and was ashamed that he had so easily forgotten why it was he worked so hard. Turning back to Alistair he said:

"Maybe I have been working too much…" Relieved that Seto was willing to agree with him, Alistair let his gaze soften.

"I know that after what happened at Grand Championship with Siegfried von Schroeder you're worried about keeping Kaiba Corp on top, but it's not worth killing yourself over, and besides, he's no threat to you; you invented state of the art holographic technology; no one's going to top that. Especially not once you release your virtual reality pods. And plus, Kaiba Land's been hugely successful. Take a moment to just appreciate all the things you've already done instead of always focusing on the future."All the talk of time again reminded Seto of what Bakura had said. His face darkened. "What is it?"

"That's what Bakura was talking about. He gave me the same stupid Egyptian speech I got from Ishizu Ishtar at Battle City, then told me to take Pegasus's eye to Cairo in order to 'discover my past.'" Alistair crinkled his eyebrows.

"What does that mean? You've never even been to Egypt."

"I have no idea, but obviously someone's been talking to him or else he wouldn't have kidnapped Mokuba to get to me. Do you see why you and I have to keep _this_ a secret now?" It was a frequent argument of theirs and Alistair didn't appreciate Seto using this situation to throw it in his face, nor did he particularly care for Seto's use of the word 'this' instead of 'relationship' as though putting that label on it would somehow make him seem weak.

"I'm not a fifteen year old kid and I'm more than capable of taking care of myself. And so would Mokuba if you let him learn how to defend himself."

"It's not your job to tell me how to raise him," Seto said angrily, his defenses automatically activated. A groan came from the bed and both men turned in time to see Mokuba open his eyes.

"What happened?" he asked groggily. "Seto? Alistair?"

"Mokuba," Seto breathed, sitting beside his brother on the bed. "Are you alright?"

"I think so." He sat up.

"What did Bakura do to you?"

"I'm not sure. I was just leaving the arcade and was about to call to have Alfred pick me up when Bakura came up to me. But he was acting really strangely; not like himself at all and asked me where you were so I said you were at work but that you were really busy and he sort of smiled at me and said something about how you'd definitely take the time to talk to him once you saw what he had with him and then that ring he wears around his neck started glowing. That's all I remember."

"He must have sent your soul to the Shadow Realm," Alistair realized, aghast. Dartz had talked about the 'Shadow Games' that those in possession of the Millennium Items were capable of playing and about how powerful they were, though he had sounded confident that the power of the Orichalcos was stronger.

"The Shadow Realm?" Mokuba's voice was fearful. He remembered all too well Pegasus saying something similar at Duelist Kingdom. It didn't bring back any happy memories.

"Oh please, don't tell me _you_ believe in all that nonsense too," Seto said scornfully. "Then again, you still think a card can take people's souls so I shouldn't be surprised." Alistair ignored him.

"Is that all he said about it?" he pressed.

"I think so."

"Seto, I know how you feel about magic, but the Millennium Items are dangerous and if there's someone who has one who's trying to get you involved you should be careful. You've seen firsthand what that eye is capable of, and the pharaoh's Millennium Puzzle for that matter, and those are just two of seven. The ring Mokuba mentioned is probably the Millennium Ring which is seriously bad news."

"Are you listening to yourself? Millennium Items, magic, the 'Shadow Realm.' How can you expect me to believe that? That's ridiculous. There's no such thing as magic or past lives or real monsters. Pegasus is a snake, and a rich one. He can more than afford the drugs and the technology it would take to fake a magic act just like your old boss. And whoever Bakura's working for obviously has some serious dough too. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he's working for Pegasus or even Siegfried von Schroeder; I didn't believe his little 'I'm sorry' act for one second.

He just told me to go to Egypt to distract me so that he can take over Kaiba Corp. Well, that's never going to happen!" Alistair wanted to shake him.

"Not everything is about Kaiba Corporation! There's obviously something going on here and you're choosing to ignore it, but that isn't going to keep you safe; you should know that by now! When you dueled Yugi at your duel dome after Battle City he told you that your ego blinds you to the truth, but you know what, I don't think that's the problem. You're not too arrogant to believe in magic; you're just too stubborn to admit that you were wrong!"

"I fail to see how my views on magic have anything to do with anything. The fact of the matter is that Bakura kidnapped Mokuba and threatened his life just to give me some stupid antique eyeball and try to get me to go to Egypt so that whoever he's working for can take over my company. _That's_ the reality Alistair and if you think otherwise then you're a fool. I however am not as gullible as his boss apparently thinks I am and I'm not about to play into his hands. I'm staying here."

"Your views on magic matter because regardless of what you want to believe, someone with a very powerful Millennium Item is targeting you and if you don't take strides to protect yourself you're going to end up playing into their hands no matter what you do! The only fool here is _you_!"

Mokuba looked back and forth between the two of them warily. He hated it when they fought, which they still did and often. He was always afraid that their next fight would be the one that would shatter the fragile happiness they had managed to find.

"Please don't fight," he said, bringing their attention back to him. "It's not worth it. It doesn't matter which one of you is right because whether it's magic or some kind of trick there's obviously something going on that we have to deal with _together_." Seto wasn't willing to back down just yet, but Alistair could see that Mokuba had a point. He also knew that arguing about magic with Seto was pointless; the CEO wouldn't admit it was real if God himself told him so.

"You're right Mokuba. So what _are_ we going to do?" Both turned to look at Seto.

"Nothing. At least not until I figure out who Bakura's working for. Now as you so kindly pointed out Alistair I haven't had any sleep so I'm going to bed and since you haven't slept either I suggest that you join me. And Mokuba: I'm glad you're ok, but you should stay in bed too; I'll have Trudy cancel your lessons."

* * *

Once he had assured Trudy that all was well, called his secretary to tell her he wasn't coming in that day and to direct anything pressing to Roland, checked his emails, and taken a shower, Seto was ready to fall into bed next to Alistair who was waiting for him.

"I'm glad that both of you are alright; I was really worried, especially after what happened with Siegfried von Schroeder."

"Thanks for that overwhelming vote of confidence," Seto replied sleepily, his eyes closed. "Worrying about me implies that you think there's a chance I won't make it out of whatever I get myself into."

"Oh, silly me, I keep forgetting that you're invincible."

"That's better. Now come here." Without opening his eyes he raised his arm and Alistair lay down next to him.

Seto fell asleep straight away, his breathing deep and steady, but Alistair, tired though he was, couldn't get his brain to shut down; there were too many thoughts running through his mind. Why would a Millennium Item wielder want Seto to go to Egypt and give him the Millennium Eye? It didn't make any sense unless Bakura was implying that Seto, like Yugi, was a reincarnation of someone from the past. Was that possible?

Ishizu Ishtar, the owner of the Millennium Necklace had wanted to talk to Seto right before the start of Battle City and had given him the Obelisk the Tormentor card after showing him several choice artifacts on display at the museum, but the security camera footage Alistair had seen of the meeting didn't have sound and since the exchange hadn't seemed overly important other than the outcome he hadn't paid much attention to it. Now he wished he could remember what had been on the tablets she'd shown him.

And if Seto _was_ a reincarnation of someone else, what did that mean? Alistair had never completely grasped the concept of the spirit of the pharaoh living in Yugi's Millennium Puzzle aside from the fact that it meant two souls shared one body; taking down the pharaoh had been Raphael's job, not his.

Still, if Seto wasn't willing to entertain the possibility that magic was real, he wouldn't go for a reincarnation theory either which left Alistair to pick up the slack. Someone in their camp had to keep an eye out for any dark magic coming their way and it clearly wouldn't be Seto, therefore it had to be him. So if Seto wanted to waste his time investigating people who might want to take over Kaiba Corp, _he_ would have to research the Egypt connection himself.

* * *

**Author's Note: **The first couple of chapters are going to attempt to fill in some of the gaps left in the series, particularly regarding Seto's abrupt decision to fly to Egypt after saying multiple times he wouldn't go. The vague time frame leaves plenty of breathing room to add Alistair into the mix, which I have (hopefully successfully) done while staying as true to canon as possible (albeit a mix of the sub and dub).


	2. Fate

**Continuing to bridge the gaps in Seto's character arc in Dawn of the Duel **

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!, I never did, and I probably never will.

* * *

_"After all this time  
Things I thought that I'd left behind  
Are catching up with me"_

_Down the Hall, _We Are Scientists

**Chapter 2**

After his investigation into a possible connection between Bakura and either Pegasus or Siegfried von Schroeder ran cold, Seto chalked the incident up to Bakura having lost his mind and tried to forget about it which turned out to be quite difficult given that he still had Pegasus's golden eye lying on his desk. He couldn't explain why he didn't just get rid of it, but every time he made a move in that direction something else would come up and distract him long enough to forget about it again.

He was certain that having it around was the cause for the strange dreams that had started the day he'd received it. In the dreams he kept seeing the same faces, faces that looked strangely and unsettlingly familiar, yet try as he might he couldn't quite place them. All the dreams took place in what appeared to be ancient Egypt.

At first he didn't want to tell Alistair about them because he knew it would just result in another 'magic is real' speech, but after two weeks of waking the redhead up because he was thrashing around in his sleep, he caved.

To his credit Alistair didn't give him a speech, but instead asked Seto to describe the dreams while he listened with rapt attention.

"_What do you think they're trying to tell you?_" he'd asked, his gray eyes serious.

"_That I need to stop thinking about what Bakura told me and get rid of that eye_."

"_What did you do with it_?"

"_It's on my desk still, why_?"

"_No reason_."

"_It's not because I'm considering going to Egypt if that's what you're thinking._"

"_I didn't say anything_."

"_You didn't have to_." Alistair had bitten his tongue and not told Seto what he really thought about the whole situation.

His research had led him to the very tablets that Ishizu had shown Seto several years previously. He clearly saw the striking resemblance the pharaoh on the tablet bore to Yugi, but couldn't say the same for the other figure, though the dragon above its head did look like Blue Eyes. Still, given the circumstances he felt it was a fairly solid hypothesis that Ishizu had told Seto that he was the reincarnation of the figure on the tablet, who apparently had been a member of the pharaoh of the time's royal court.

The only piece he couldn't quite grasp was where Bakura fit into the story. He'd learned that Ryou Bakura had been a transfer student at Domino High School and was a friend, albeit not a good one, of Yugi's, and had joined his group of friends on the Duelist Kingdom Island as a cheerleader halfway through the tournament, and had been one of the finalists in the Battle City Tournament which, when he read it again, did sound vaguely familiar. Most recently he'd booked a flight to Cairo. And that was all Alistair could find out about him aside from his medical history which painted a picture of a sickly young man who had been in and out of hospitals all his life, though not in the last year which was interesting.

The only supposition he could make was that because he had a Millennium Item, Bakura too was being possessed by the ancient spirit of a prior incarnation.

As for Seto's 'dreams', he was convinced that they were in fact memories from his past life. Not, again, that he could share any of his theories with Seto without running up against the wall the CEO's stubbornness had created to ward off any and all possible arguments that would lead to him having to admit he'd been wrong.

Later that day as he was sitting in his office, Seto received word from Roland that Yugi and his merry band of dweebs had flown to Egypt. It was too big a coincidence for him to ignore and he wondered what had prompted the sudden trip, though it didn't take long for him to come to the conclusion that Bakura had gotten to them too and convinced them to go.

But why? Could it be that Bakura hadn't been after Kaiba Corp after all? Then what _had_ he been after? What did he stand to gain if Seto flew to Egypt? He didn't like the situation at all and felt horribly manipulated which he confided to Alistair that evening as they got into bed, though he left out having thought he heard the cry of the Blue Eyes White Dragon coming from within the Millennium Eye.

"If there's one thing I can't stand it's someone trying to manipulate me!" he said angrily. Alistair decided against adding that there were many things that Seto couldn't stand beyond being manipulated including, but not limited to: repeating himself (though he did it often), people who were slow on the uptake (though he himself was constantly guilty of just that), incompetence (as defined by him), losing (as proven by his obsession with defeating Yugi), friendship (though he had in a strange sense become friends with Yugi), people who believed in magic (despite sleeping with one), and people who didn't fall over themselves to do what he wanted (even though he almost always ultimately decided he could have done it better himself).

"Are you familiar with the Serenity Prayer?" The question took Seto aback.

"The what?"

"It goes like this: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference."

"Did you get that from a fortune cookie?" Alistair sighed in frustration.

"The point is: either let things run their course after accepting that you have no control over them, or do something about it." It was a sentiment he found himself conveying quite often given how prone the brunette was to complaining.

"I'm going to get to the bottom of this and make sure he pays for making me waste my time!"

"Might I offer a place to start?"

"Not if it involves ancient Egypt."

"It does, but hear me out: say that it is all a hoax-."

"Which it is."

"That doesn't really matter if Bakura believes that it's true and acts accordingly."

"What's your point?"

"He told you that you should go to Egypt to discover why Blue Eyes is your favorite monster, right? And that it has something to do with the past, correct? I think that what he's referring to is connected to the story Ishizu told you the day she gave you Obelisk."

"Hold on, how did you know about that?"

"Security camera footage from the museum."

"You stalking me will never not be creepy. Continue."

"She told you that you, like Yugi, are a reincarnation of someone from the past, am I right?" Seto nodded, trying to figure out where Alistair was going with this. "Then wouldn't it make sense, since Bakura has one of the Millennium Items just like Yugi does, for him to…_think_ that he is a reincarnation too, maybe of the previous owner of the Millennium Ring?"

"I guess, but what does that have to do with me? _I_ don't have a…wait, are you saying you think that he thinks that in a past life I was the owner of the Millennium Eye and that's why he gave it to me? So I'd join his and Yugi's little Easter-egg hunt for proof that in a past life we lived in Egypt? He really is insane!"

"It's the most logical conclusion I can draw."

"Now I'm _really_ not going. What a bunch of _morons_." The idea that the whole thing could be explained away by saying that Yugi and Bakura were off chasing a fairytale made Seto feel a lot better. Suddenly he was completely relaxed. "It was pretty clever of you to put that together," he said, looking sideways at Alistair who was leaning against the backboard, his head resting against his hands which he'd placed at the back of his neck.

"Always the tone of surprise. You keep forgetting that I'm actually pretty smart. I can only assume that subconsciously it's one of the reasons you like having me around."

"Could be." But seeing Alistair sitting there half naked was reminding Seto of a very different reason.

Sex was such a wonderful way to relieve stress; Seto wished he would have known about it before. It was a lot cheaper than the sleeping pills he'd used in the past and more than twice as satisfying.

* * *

**The Next Day**:

After returning from his lunch break, Seto sat at his desk and pondered, once again, what Bakura had said about his bond with Blue Eyes. Of course there was no magical reason why it was his favorite, but despite now knowing why Bakura had randomly shown up, Seto found himself pulling out one of his three dragons. As he stared at the card he found himself saying:

"Can't these people see this is only a card game?" only to turn to the eye that always seemed to be staring at him and adding: "what're _you_ looking at? You think I'm going to let _you_ change my mind?" He picked it up. "I am _not_ flying to Egypt." The eye stared resolutely back at him. "Look at me: I'm talking to some golden antique eyeball." Suddenly the eye seemed to glitter. He brought it closer to his own eye to see what was emitting the light only to have a sudden brief vision of Yugi dressed as an Egyptian Pharaoh. He was so startled that he leapt up and dropped the eye which landed on the carpet with a dull thud.

"No way! It's a trick!" There was no way that what he had seen was real, that his dreams were real. He was only seeing things because he hadn't been sleeping well, that was it. Nothing more. Still, the hallucination left him shaken and he ended up going home early. Mokuba was out with friends, as was Trudy, but Alistair was there.

"You're home early," he commented, setting _Moby Dick_ aside as Seto barged into his room. "What's the matter?" Seto collapsed onto the couch beside him before saying anything.

"I think I'm losing my mind," he explained matter-of-factly, resting his face in his hands. Alistair placed a hand on the CEO's back, alarmed by what Seto had said but trying to keep his voice calm.

"What makes you say that?" He scooted in closer.

"I keep seeing and hearing things that I know aren't there. Today I had a vision of Yugi dressed as a pharaoh after talking to Pegasus's Millennium Eye and yesterday I'd swear I heard Blue Eyes. I've been prone to having hallucinations in the past, mostly in the last four years, but I didn't have them nearly as frequently as I have recently. I really feel like I'm starting to lose my grip on reality. What is wrong with me?"

Alistair would have found the situation funny if Seto hadn't sounded so scared.

"You're not crazy," he said, his voice soothing, massaging Seto's upper back. "Just calm down."

"Calm down?" Seto demanded, standing up and knocking Alistair's hands off him. "I just told you that I'm hearing voices and you're telling me to _calm down_?"

"Look, I know you don't want to hear this, but maybe you're not hallucinating; maybe…well…maybe it's for real."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"Actually, yes. Wouldn't you rather have magic, reincarnation, and visions be real than have the reality be that you're cracking up?"

"That's like saying 'wouldn't it be great if war wasn't real? Wouldn't that just be so much more pleasant? Let's pretend that it's all just staged.'" Seto suddenly noticed how hurt and angry Alistair looked. "That was an insensitive example, I'm sorry. But do you see my point?"

"All I see is a man so hell-bent on being right that he'd rather say that he's crazy than admit that perhaps there are things in the world that he can't grasp or explain and that he was wrong to deny their existence." Alistair's sympathy for Seto's fear was completely gone.

He was fed up with hearing Seto ignore blatant evidence that he was wrong, and he couldn't believe that he'd used war as an example to try to prove that he was right. They'd been together long enough for him to know how unconscionable it was to bring that up, _especially_ when he knew Alistair still occasionally had nightmares about it.

"Is that really what you think of me? That I'm _choosing_ to think I'm losing it? Thanks a lot."

"Go prove everyone wrong then why don't you?" Alistair taunted him, standing too. "Fly to Egypt and show everyone that it's just one big mind trick. That the only one living in the real world is you; the sole person not suffering from the delusion that we live in a reality where magic exists.

All the things that happened at Duelist Kingdom: fake. Pegasus just knocked people out using some drug emanating from the arena and used a mirror trick to see what cards people were holding. All the stuff Ishizu Ishtar told you: some fairytale she invented to drum up interest in her exhibit. Those 'hallucinations' you had: just the result of sleep deprivation and the stress of hosting and dueling in such a huge tournament. That Anubis guy who showed up in the middle of your duel with Yugi: some guy that Yugi defeated at some point who used a time bomb to make it seem like real monsters were destroying your duel dome. Dartz: another bored rich guy who thought it would be fun to pretend that he was a ten thousand year old Atlantian with the capability of sealing people's souls away. His henchmen: gullible idiots. Oh, and the US coastguard too. Those supposed 'visions' I showed you: just the result of a hallucinogenic drug I slipped into the water on the plane. Am I forgetting anything?" Seto hated to admit it, but hearing Alistair listing all those things did cause his confidence to waver. "It must be such a burden having to deal with everyone you know living in a dream world."

"Enough! I get what you're trying to prove." There was a pause in which Seto digested what Alistair had said while the redhead glared at him, his arms crossed. "Maybe I will go," he said finally, more to himself than to Alistair. What did he have to lose? There was no way he'd get any work done if he kept hearing Blue Eyes and having weird visions. What would happen if he spaced out in the middle of a meeting and started seeing things? He'd end up at a mental institution.

"Do whatever you want, you always do."

"Can you cut me some slack and ditch the attitude?"

"Ironically that sounds like something almost every single one of your employees could say to _you_."

"I don't think that's funny."

"I'm not laughing." Even though a small part of him wished that Alistair would give him a break every once in a while, Seto was mostly grateful that he didn't; that was what made him so much different from everyone else.

"So are we going or not?"

"We? No, there's no 'we'. _If_ I decide to go, I'm going alone."

"Why? If it's all just 'hocus pocus' it's not like it's dangerous." Seto rolled his eyes.

"Use your brain. Who would I be flying out to go find? Actually, I'll just make this easy: Bakura and Yugi. I already told you why I don't want Bakura to know about you after what happened to Mokuba, and as for Yugi and the Geek Squad…let's just say that regardless of what they might say about not telling anyone, Wheeler's got a big mouth. The last thing I want to have to deal with while I'm in the middle of a psychotic break is the media. Besides, with me gone I need someone here to make sure that Mokuba does his homework and goes to bed on time." Alistair could have pointed out that Trudy would be just as capable of looking after Mokuba but knew that that wasn't the point.

"Fine, I'll stay. When are you leaving?"

"_If_ I decide to go it'll be tomorrow; no point waiting around thinking about it."

* * *

By the next morning he'd made up his mind; his dreams, just as unsettling as ever, had kept him up half the night and Alistair too by default.

"They're not even nightmares," he explained, like he always did after a bad episode. "I don't know why I keep waking up feeling like they were."

"I have dreams like that too," Alistair mused, absentmindedly fixing Seto's disheveled hair. "Even if it's a happy memory I always wake up with a knot in my stomach."

"I'm being stupid. These aren't even real. I'll fly to Egypt, but it's just going to be to prove once and for all that this past life nonsense is a joke and that everyone who believes in it is an idiot."

"And how is that going to solve your problem?" Alistair asked, crossing his arms.

"Once I can prove without a doubt that it's just a sham I can put it behind me for good and hopefully that'll stop me from hallucinating." Alistair was no doctor, but he was fairly certain that wasn't how it worked. But once Seto got something in his head it was almost impossible to change his mind no matter how rational the argument against it might be. He supposed it didn't really matter; either Seto would go and come back a believer or he wouldn't, though Alistair didn't hold out much hope. He knew firsthand and perhaps better than anyone, aside from Mokuba, just how stubborn Seto could be.

"Alistair, can you promise me something?"

"That depends."

"Don't tell anyone where I'm going. When Mokuba or Roland or Trudy ask you where I went tell them you don't know." Alistair slowly uncrossed his arms.

"Why?"

"I don't want them to know that anything's wrong." Alistair could see that Seto was serious and so against his better judgment he promised.

"They'll come looking for you though you know. There's nothing I can do about that."

"Let them. I'm going to jam the transmitter on my jet. That should slow them down long enough for me to do what I have to."

"Fine. But I really wish you'd realize that you don't have to do everything alone."

* * *

True to his word, after Seto left Alistair didn't breathe a word of his whereabouts to anyone, not even when Mokuba started crying after realizing his brother was gone, and tried his best to console the teen while pretending he had no idea where Seto was.

His act fooled Mokuba and Roland, but Trudy saw right through him.

"You know where he is, don't you?" she asked him after Mokuba had stormed out of the house on the back of having accused Alistair of not caring that Seto could be in danger.

"_Bakura could have done something terrible to him and you don't even want to try and find him!"_ he'd yelled, tears still streaming down his cheeks. _"I hope when he gets back he never forgives you!"_

"What makes you think _I_ know anything?" Alistair asked, lowering his eyes lest they give him away.

"I wasn't born yesterday. You care about him too much to be so calm. He told you not to tell anyone, didn't he?"

"I promised," he conceded. "And now Mokuba hates me."

"No he doesn't. He's just worried about his brother. It's cruel of both of you to make him suffer."

"What was I supposed to do? Tell him? Seto would never forgive me if I did that. He has his reasons for not wanting anyone to know."

"He always does." She sighed. "But he isn't always right."

* * *

Despite Seto's best efforts to hide his location, Mokuba was finally able to override the jam on the jet's signal. Seeing that Seto was in Egypt took him aback, but he quickly got over his surprise and had Roland book him a flight.

It was only upon arriving at the Cairo airport that Mokuba realized he had no idea where to go from there. He spoke nary a word of Arabic, and when he tried calling his brother's cell phone it went straight to voicemail just like it had been doing all week. He was starting to panic when he heard a familiar voice coming from behind him.

"Mokuba?" Duke Devlin asked questioningly as he and Solomon Motou walked through the gate and into the terminal. "What are you doing here?"

"Duke? Mr. Motou?" Though he didn't know either of them well, Mokuba was glad to see them. They could lead him to Yugi who would surely know where his brother was. He'd put enough together on the flight over to realize that Seto had gone chasing after his arch rival yet again, despite having confided that he didn't think he'd be able to defeat him. "I'm here to find my brother. Do you know if he's with Yugi?"

"Kaiba's here too?" Duke asked in surprise. "I thought he didn't believe in all this magic stuff."

"After everything he and Yugi have been through together I certainly hope he isn't still denying it," Mr. Motou cut in.

"So you don't know?"

"No, sorry, this is the first we're hearing about him being here," Duke said apologetically. "But you're welcome to come with us when we meet up with Yugi; maybe he knows where he is."

"Thank you."

Out of the shadow of his older brother, Mokuba turned out to be good company as the trio made their way to downtown Cairo where Mr. Motou had arranged for them to catch a ride on a cruise liner owned by Ishizu Ishtar and her brother Marik that would take them to Yugi and his friends.

"Hey, I think I see them!" Duke called to his companions once they'd been on the boat for a little under a half an hour, shielding his eyes against the sun as he squinted towards the shore.

"Is Seto with them?" Mokuba asked hopefully, craning his neck to see.

"I can't tell." But Mokuba had spotted his brother's unmistakable silhouette.

"He's there!" he pointed then ran back below deck, running Mr. Motou over in his race to the exit.

"Be careful!" Solomon grumbled, picking himself up off the ground and dusting himself off.

"I'm sorry," Mokuba apologized. "But I saw my brother!" Seeing the look of excitement on the younger Kaiba's face, Solomon felt his momentary annoyance fade.

"It's alright, no harm done. I'm sure he'll be happy to see you."

"He better be!"

As soon as the ship docked Mokuba ran down the gangplank and leapt on Seto, throwing his arms around his neck and almost knocking him flat.

"Seto!"

"Mokuba?"

"You took off without telling anyone, so Roland and I tracked you down." He stopped himself short of saying anything about Alistair, though he planned on telling Seto all about the redhead's seeming disinterest in his disappearance as soon as they were alone.

"I see." Seto did his best to sound annoyed. "I didn't know I needed to report every move I make to my little brother." Still clutching onto him, Mokuba replied:

"Well you better not do it again or I'll take over Kaiba Corp and make _you_ work for _me_."

* * *

Back in Domino Alistair wiped the sweat from his brow as he hoisted himself onto the roof of the abandoned building in the middle of the woods.

Since Seto left he'd been spending all his free time in the forest with his books and had discovered the ruined structure. At first it had caused him to shrink back in fear as it reminded him of the ruins of his hometown, but then he'd noticed how nature had started to reclaim the building which had caused the fear to subside.

For no tangible reason he'd decided to climb it and read while sitting on the roof though he first took a moment to take in the surrounding landscape from the new height. The wind whipped through his hair as he gazed upon the nearby trees. He decided then that while the top of the mountain was where he could go to remember his family, this place was for him.

* * *

**Author's Note: **How many of you noticed all of the 4Kids dialogue? I warned you I was sticking to canon (in this case, dub canon).


	3. Private Life

**This chapter ends the 'filling in of canon gaps' section. From here on out everything is post-canon. **

**Disclaimer: **Things I own: a) A corvette b) A mansion c) Yu-Gi-Oh! d) None of the above Answer: d

* * *

_"Living in the limelight, always in a rush.  
When the lights are out and the cameras are gone,  
Down comes the shades, she wants to be alone.  
You know that girl loves her private life._

_No one ever knows life behind the scene,_  
_Getting past the glamour, the sparkle and the sheen._  
_Back into the shadows, is where she wants to be,_  
_Discretion is her answer, she needs her privacy."_

_~Private Life, _Blackfoot

**Chapter 3**

On the cruise ship Seto was attempting to heal his wounded ego after having been turned down. How dare Yugi deny him the chance to defeat him in a duel in front of the dweeb team? And then top it off by insulting him further by not accepting his offer to build a deck out of cards from his private collection?

"Seto," Mokuba started hesitantly. "Why are we staying here? Do you want to see if Yugi can beat the pharaoh in a duel?"

"Please," Seto snorted. "As if I believe in that. I just want to enjoy bearing witness to his decent into madness as he attempts to duel himself." That wasn't the truth though. The events of the last several days had been too real and too intricate to have been a mere illusion; even Seto couldn't refute that. He therefore was forced to accept that he'd been wrong all along. The revelation wasn't as shocking as he would have expected given that a part of him had believed it already. He'd never openly admit it though, not after having denied it all for so long. Which reminded him…

"I'll be right back; I have to make a phone call." He stood up from where he'd been sitting on the bolted-in chair in his and Mokuba's cabin.

"I wouldn't bother; he didn't even care that you were gone." Seto was surprised that Mokuba knew who he'd intended to call and even more so by the unexpected malice in his younger brother's voice.

"Mokuba…"

"He acted like it was no big deal even though for all we knew Bakura could have captured you!"

"Stop. If you want to be mad at someone about this, be mad at me. Alistair was just doing what I told him to do."

"What you told him to do…?" It suddenly clicked into place. "You _told_ him where you were going? He lied to me! He said he had no idea!"

"Because I told him to say he had no idea. I didn't want you chasing after me."

"So you decided it would be better to let me worry about you? You should have known I was going to come looking for you!"

"I did. That's why I jammed the jet's locator signal." Mokuba stared openmouthed at his brother, the one person he idolized and looked up to, his dark blue eyes conveying the betrayal he felt.

"How could you?" he asked, his voice shaking.

"I wanted you to be safe. I hoped that by the time you un-jammed the signal this would all be over. I was just trying to protect you. This was something I had to do alone; Alistair understood that."

"I'm fifteen; that's old enough to be allowed to have my own reaction to things, don't you think?" Seto regarded the person standing in front of him. It was true that his brother was no longer a child, though not quite a man. Perhaps he _was_ underestimating Mokuba's maturity. But what was he supposed to have said? _Hey, Mokuba: I think I'm losing my mind, but on the off chance that the hallucinations I've been having are actually real I've decided to fly to Egypt._

"Maybe you're right," he said slowly. "I'm sorry." Apologies were not something Seto dished out lightly and Mokuba knew it. "Don't blame Alistair; he was just respecting what _I_ wanted. He didn't betray you; I did. But I promise that it won't happen again."

"It better not," Mokuba snapped, though he had already forgiven the offense. "I wasn't kidding about taking over Kaiba Corp." Seto rolled his eyes.

"Don't get too cocky. Anyway, I'll be right back." He stepped out of the cabin and climbed the small flight of stairs leading to the deck. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and made sure there was no one else around before making the call.

It was almost six in the morning when Alistair's phone started buzzing. At first he merely incorporated the buzzing into the dream he was having but suddenly woke up and realized someone was calling him. He blearily accepted the call without even bothering to check the caller ID; there was only one person it could be.

"Have you proven everyone wrong yet?" he asked, his voice raspy from having just woken up.

"Of course," Seto replied dismissively. "It's not like it was hard. The whole thing was just an elaborate hoax; but I already knew that."

"So you really are just crazy then, huh?" Alistair said, amused. He could tell by the tone of Seto's voice that he did in fact now believe that his visions had been real but was far too proud to admit it.

"Guess so. Thank god for pills. Anyway, Mokuba and I are flying back either tomorrow or the day after. Yugi's decided to duel his imaginary friend and I want to watch; it should be entertaining." Alistair would have expressed his surprise at hearing that Yugi would be dueling the pharaoh and asked questions about it, but given who he was speaking to, he knew it would be a waste of breath.

"Well have fun being entertained," he yawned.

"Did I wake you up?" Seto asked, the time difference occurring to him for the first time.

"Kind of. It's no big deal though. I might as well go for a morning ride before work." He shifted the phone to his other ear and got out of bed, eliciting an unappreciative meow from Sewell.

"Do you have that cat in my room?"

"Calm down; I'm sleeping in mine so that we could both have some company." Seto relaxed. He knew his dislike of Alistair's cat was irrational, but it wasn't something he chose to work on.

"Aw, do you miss me?" Seto cooed sarcastically, though he was genuinely curious. He hadn't personally had the time to miss either Mokuba or Alistair, but he had the excuse of being magically transported back to ancient Egypt and having to live through a war and the reign of terror by a madman trying to take over the world.

"I don't know how I've even managed to work up the strength to get out of bed without you here," Alistair replied with just as much insincerity, though he had in fact missed waking up next to Seto the last few days. He wondered if Seto had missed him too but doubted it.

"I guess I'll just have to hurry home to ensure you go back to being a productive member of society, huh?"

* * *

Duke had intended to go up on deck to smoke a cigarette, but when he'd heard Kaiba talking on the phone he'd shamelessly paused to eavesdrop since it didn't sound like Kaiba was taking a business call. His eyebrows rose higher on his forehead as the conversation proceeded. It sounded to him like the CEO was dating someone. He didn't know what was more shocking: the concept of Kaiba being in love with someone or someone being in love with Kaiba.

As soon as Kaiba was off the phone Duke coughed loudly to announce his presence.

"What do _you_ want?" Seto asked suspiciously, hoping against hope that Devlin hadn't caught anything he'd said on the phone.

"Relax man, I'm just up here to smoke a cigarette." He held up the pack. "Do you want one?"

"I don't smoke." Seto's tone made it clear what he thought of people who did. Duke shrugged and removed a cigarette from the pack before proceeding to light it with his custom-made Dungeon Dice Monsters lighter.

Seto was torn between wanting to leave and not wanting Duke to think he was leaving because of him.

"Who were you talking to?" Duke asked casually, exhaling a puff of smoke and tapping the side of his cigarette on the liner's railing.

"Roland, not that it's any of your business," Seto replied coldly, hoping against hope that Devlin hadn't heard what he'd been saying. "And can you blow your smoke in the other direction?" he added, coughing.

"Oh, sorry." There was a pause. "I'm thinking about asking Joey's sister Serenity out," Duke said, blowing another puff of smoke out to sea.

"Do you want me to congratulate you on expanding the geek squad?" Seto snapped. By now he realized that the sleazy playboy was leading up to something and he wanted to speed up the process so he could leave without feeling like he was slinking off.

"No, I'm just making small talk. So, are _you_ seeing anybody?" He glanced sideways to see the reaction his statement elicited.

Seto couldn't gauge whether it was an offhand question or if Devlin really had heard his conversation with Alistair. He chose to act on the assumption that he hadn't been overheard but hesitated another moment to think of the answer that would put himself in the best light and finally opting to go on the offensive.

"This isn't a sleepover Devlin and I'm not one of your pathetic friends. Why don't you go get one of them to braid your hair and leave me alone?"

"Hey, chill out; I was just asking. I didn't know it was such a touchy subject. I didn't come up here to bother you; I just wanted to smoke. As soon as I finish this cigarette I'll leave you to your solitude I promise."

Though Duke stayed true to his word, Seto continued to watch him warily. He should have been paying more attention to what he'd been saying. Even if Devlin really hadn't heard, he never should have said something as incriminating as 'did you miss me?' or 'I guess I'll just have to hurry home' in such a public place.

Once he returned to the others all of whom, except for Yugi who was readying his deck, and Bakura who'd fallen into a deep sleep after gorging himself on practically all the food there was onboard, were hanging out in the ship's lounge recounting tales from their adventures in ancient Egypt, most of which Duke had been caught up on already, and discussing the following day's duel.

"You'll never guess what I just heard guys," he said, causing Joey, Tristan, and Téa to look up from the bolted down, slightly uncomfortable black couch they'd been lounging on.

"What is it Duke?" Tristan asked.

"Kaiba was talking to someone on the phone up on deck just now."

"He isn't planning anything sneaky, is he?" Joey asked, his hackles raised. "That guy just doesn't know when to quit!"

"No, nothing like that. It sounded like he was talking to his girlfriend." Of all the things that Duke could have said, that was the most unexpected. Tristan and Joey's eyes widened.

"No, no way," Joey said in slack-jawed disbelief, jumping up from the couch. "There's _no way_ Rich Boy has a girlfriend."

"Yeah, he doesn't care about anyone but himself," Tristan agreed. Téa, unlike the other two, didn't have as much trouble believing the news. Though _she_ could never imagine wanting to be with someone as self-absorbed and mean-spirited as Kaiba, she knew plenty of girls who harbored crushes on the champion duelist.

"He said he was talking to Roland, that guy who works for him, but unless they're having some steamy affair he was asking someone else if they missed him and telling them he'd hurry home."

"Don't you geeks have anything better to do than talk about me?" Seto, who had followed Duke back downstairs and listened in while staying hidden from view around the corner asked, walking into the lounge, his arms crossed. "For your information I _was_ talking to Roland and I was being sarcastic. I don't have a girlfriend. Again: not that it's any of _your_ business." Joey, never one to censor himself couldn't help but say snidely:

"So what, you got a _boy_friend?" He had expected some sarcastic retort, and therefore wasn't prepared for Kaiba to march angrily up to him, grab him by his collar and throw him against the wall.

"I dare you to repeat that." Seto was so furious that the hands still holding Wheeler's collar were shaking.

"Hey, get off me! I was just kidding!"

"Do you know that I could sue you for slander for saying something like that?" Tristan, Téa, and Duke could only watch on, too startled to move.

"What are ya talking about? It was just a joke!" Joey struggled to shove Kaiba off of him, but to his surprise discovered that the brunette was stronger than he was.

"Don't you _ever_ say that again." Seto's voice was low and threatening. He relinquished his grip on the other man's tan jacket and turned his back on him. Predictably Wheeler tried to tackle him from behind. Seto sidestepped him and Joey crashed to the floor. Suddenly Téa, Tristan, and Duke unfroze.

"Hey, what'd ya do that for?" Tristan demanded as he, Téa, and Duke bent down to make sure Joey was alright.

"I was just putting a dog back in its place," Seto replied, staring down his nose at the four kneeling on the floor.

"Can't you take a joke?" Joey asked hotly, rubbing his head.

"I don't have time for jokes Wheeler. Now I suggest you keep my name out of your mouths if you want to avoid a scene like this in the future, not that I intend to see any of you losers again once we get back."

"What the hell was that about?" Duke asked once Seto had swept from the lounge.

"I don't know, but let me tell ya; for someone who spends all his time working with computers, he's got a hell of a grip."

Unlike the other three who seemed utterly bewildered by Kaiba's behavior, Téa thought she might have an inkling as to why he'd react like that to the comment Joey had made. She wouldn't have thought so, but based on the fact that a joke about having a boyfriend had touched a nerve, it seemed to Téa that there must be some truth to it. She wondered what kind of person this boyfriend would have to be to cause Kaiba to want to hurry home to them when she had never thought of the proud CEO as the type to care about anyone but himself and occasionally his younger brother.

As angry as he was that they had been talking about him and jumping to all sorts of conclusions, Seto was mostly angry with himself for having slipped up so badly. Maybe being with Alistair was affecting him more than he'd thought. He couldn't believe that he hadn't been more careful about what he'd said, or that he hadn't listened for someone coming up the stairs. Still, having talked to Alistair and now thinking about him did make Seto miss him. He was grateful to have Mokuba there but as he changed out of his clothes and lay down on the cot beside the cabin's bed, which he'd offered his brother who was already fast asleep by the time Seto returned, he wished that Alistair was there too.

* * *

Mokuba awoke the next morning with the sunlight shining in through the cabin's window. He stretched and yawned, expecting Seto to make some comment about him having slept too long, but to his surprise, when he looked over he saw that his brother was still asleep and that at some point in the night he'd kicked his blanket off and hugged his pillow.

Mokuba didn't usually catch his brother sleeping since Seto considered that far too much of a vulnerable position to be in to sleep anywhere but his own bedroom alone. Although, the younger Kaiba brother realized suddenly, Alistair probably saw Seto sleeping all the time since they shared a bed. And speaking of Alistair, could it be that Seto had become so accustomed to having the redhead by his side as he slept that he'd hugged the pillow out of habit, expecting there to be someone else there next to him?

This was a rare window into the mysterious life that Seto and Alistair shared about which Mokuba knew very little. The pair gave no indication other than the occasional spat that their relationship was anything more than platonic. They never kissed or held hands or even really did anything together at all outside of whatever they got up to in their bedroom as far as Mokuba could tell, so the fact that they obviously meant so much to each other puzzled him.

He assumed that the decision to keep things low-key was Seto's; the brunette had never been one for public displays of affection, and he felt bad for Alistair for that. If Hilary would ever decide not to show _him_ any kind of affection in front of other people he would feel as though their relationship was something she was ashamed of and wondered if that's how Alistair felt or if the decision not to even touch each other in public had been mutual, though he doubted it.

Seto stirred and opened his eyes only to catch his brother openly staring at him. In the same moment he realized that he was hugging his pillow and quickly sat up and put it back at the head of the cot.

"Why are you staring at me?" he asked moodily; sleeping with his head on just the hard cot had given him a stiff neck.

"I'm not. I mean, I am, but I'm not really looking at _you_; I was thinking about something completely different."

"Oh." Seto began changing back into his clothes. "How long have you been awake?"

"Not long. I was thinking about calling Hilary since she gets out of school soon if I've got the time difference right. Apropos: what did Alistair say last night?" The previous night's events came rushing back.

"Nothing. He just asked when we'd be back and I told him." He decided not to tell Mokuba about what had happened afterwards. Mokuba, no idiot, could sense that there was more to it than that, but abstained from asking; Seto hated being pressed for information. "Anyway, get dressed so we can go watch Yugi duel himself and then fly home; I'm sick of this place."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Seto always struck me as the kind of person who, despite loving being in the spotlight, only likes doing it on his own terms. Therefore, one of my headcanons is that he goes to great lengths to keep his personal life private (as was shown in the Cyber World arc). It's not so much that Alistair is a man (though that's a part of it) and more to do with wanting privacy, lest someone use the information to hurt him.


	4. Domestic Life

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! But I'm oh so grateful that it exists

* * *

_"You clean the bathroom_  
_and I do the dishes_  
_I water the lawn_  
_and you feed the fishes_  
_What a neat little domestic life that we live"_

_~Neat Little Domestic Life_, Of Montreal

**Chapter 4**

As Alistair finished shelving the books on his cart he wondered what would happen once Seto and Mokuba returned from Egypt. Would Seto's newfound belief in the magic that had been going on around him for so long have any kind of effect on him? And if so, what?

"Excuse me?" Alistair turned and saw that the person who had spoken had red hair and gray eyes.

"Moira?" he exclaimed in surprise.

"It _is_ you. I didn't know that you were back in Domino. Or did you never leave?"

"No…I did. But now I'm back." It was horribly awkward talking to her. After he'd returned from his disastrous stint working for a relief organization in his home country called Robinhood, Alistair had decided to sever his ties to the friends he'd had before he'd left.

"And you work here now I take it?"

"Uh, yeah, I started working here a couple of months ago. I'm using the money to pay for college although I'm not sure what I want to study yet."

"There's an open house next week at the university where they have representatives from all the departments available to talk to prospective students if you're interested. I'm taking my little sister; would you like to join us?"

"Um…yeah, ok. Do you still have my cell phone number?" She nodded.

"I'll text you with the details later."

"Are you and Darren still friends?" he inquired after a pause.

"Not really. He and the others got really heavily involved in activism and I just want to get away from all that so we sort of drifted apart."

"Yeah, I haven't talked to him since I've been back either…" He'd thought about it, but ultimately decided against getting back into contact with his old friend given that Darren knew about him and Seto, and Alistair couldn't risk the brunette finding out that someone knew about it when he'd sworn not to tell; Seto would never forgive him.

He and Moira chatted for a few more minutes until one of his coworkers shot him a look. He hastily excused himself and returned to his almost empty cart. She waved goodbye and promised to text him about the open house.

Not ten minutes after she'd left, Alistair's cell phone started buzzing. A quick peek told him that it was Seto. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure he was alone, Alistair ducked behind the bookshelf, dragging the metal cart with him and kneeling down beside it before answering the call.

"Why are you calling me?" he whispered. Seto's eyes widened in surprise. It wasn't like Alistair to blow him off like that. That was _his_ thing.

"Oh silly me, I thought you'd want to know that we're back. And why are you whispering?"

"I'm at work! You know, at the _library_?"

"Oh. Well can you come home?" Usually Alistair found the fact that Seto seemed to live in a parallel universe endearing, but sometimes it was exasperating.

"Yeah, in forty-five minutes. Not everyone is lucky enough to make their own hours."

"Have I ever told you what a sunny disposition you have?"

"Like you're one to talk." Someone coughed softly to his left. Alistair looked up into the stern face of his supervisor. "I have to go. Welcome back. Bye." He hung up. "I am so sorry about that," he apologized. "My boy—best friend just got back from a trip and I…I just…It won't happen again." Mr. Himeno, a man of few words who nonetheless was more than capable of conveying his disapproval, continued to frown at him, the deep wrinkles of his face shadowy. He shook his head and walked away as silently as he had come, leaving his chastised employee sitting on the floor.

Alistair couldn't explain why, but his boss's dissatisfaction with his work drove him to do better so that he could earn the man's approval.

Seto pondered his and Alistair's conversation the entire way back to the mansion. He couldn't believe that the redhead had hung up on him. Had calling to tell him he was back been a mistake somehow?

In retrospect he wasn't sure why he had called. What had he expected, for Alistair to drop everything and come running? Perhaps it had been a selfish wish…

Alistair was careful to finish the rest of his shift on a good note and went out of his way to not make even the tiniest of mistakes while shelving or helping patrons. Finally he was free to clock out and go home. As he was pulling on his riding gloves, one of the part-time workers from the kid's department, a petite brown-haired girl with dark eyes, walked into the back room.

"You're putting your glove on inside out," she informed him, pointing, a small smile on her face.

"Oh, thanks." He quickly fixed his mistake. "It's Zoe, right?" Her smile widened.

"Yeah. And you're Alistair."

"Yeah," he replied, surprised she remembered given that they'd only ever spoken once or twice.

"Are you doing anything later?" she asked suddenly with a failed attempt at sounding casual, and it dawned on him why she'd approached him in the first place. "A couple of us, the ones under forty that is, were going to go to the movies, do you want to come?" He tried to figure out the best and least painful way to let her know he wasn't, nor would he ever be, interested.

"I can't. My boyfriend just got back from a trip and I promised I'd spend the evening with him. Could I take a rain check?" Understanding, disappointment, and resentment crossed her face in quick succession, but she hurridly tried to cover them up. The smile still on her face she said:

"Oh, your boyfriend. Yeah, that makes sense. Where was he?"

"Egypt. It was sort of a soul-searching thing." He wasn't sure why he told her that except to fill what would inevitably have become an uncomfortable silence. She laughed, though it didn't reach her eyes.

"I wish I had the money to fly to Egypt for some soul-searching. The best I can do is the mall. Anyway, have fun with your boyfriend."

"Yeah, and you have fun at the movies. What are you going to see?" She shrugged.

"We'll just decide when we get there. I should get going. See ya."

"Bye."

Upon further reflection, Alistair decided that he needed a better word for Seto than 'boyfriend.' It just didn't fit somehow.

By the time he had parked his bike in the garage and gone inside, Seto and Mokuba were in the middle of eating some of Trudy's sandwiches.

"Welcome back," he said uncertainly as he took his seat. Given that he and Mokuba had parted on less than friendly terms and that he had hung up on Seto that afternoon he wasn't sure what to expect.

"Hey Alistair," Mokuba replied, not meeting the redhead's eyes. "I'm really sorry about what I said before; Seto filled me in."

"Oh." Alistair's gaze drifted to Seto who had barely made eye contact with him when he'd entered the room. "It's ok Mokuba, I get it. It wasn't very nice of me to make you worry like that."

"Because you're such an expert on manners," Seto said snidely, taking an angry bite out of his roast beef sandwich. Alistair crossed his arms.

"I didn't have a choice; my boss was breathing down my neck! We're not allowed to use our phones while we're clocked in unless it's an emergency."

"I see." That changed things. Seeing as he was a stickler for rules himself when it came to his employees, Seto could understand Alistair's position, though he'd never been on that end of it.

"So how was Egypt?"

"Hot," Seto said blandly, setting the sandwich aside and taking a long draft out of his white coffee mug.

"And Yugi's duel against himself?" Mokuba glanced at his brother. Surely Seto wasn't going to stick to that story after what they'd witnessed, was he?

"It was boring. And pointless. I don't know why I ever wasted my time trying to beat him. There's nothing special about being crazy." He set the mug aside. "I have some unpacking to do." He stood and Alistair followed suit.

"Do you want some help with that?" he asked, his stab at sounding casual just as unsuccessful as Zoe's had been.

"Sure. Mokuba, can you touch base with Roland for me?"

"Not a problem." Mokuba flashed a thumbs up, taking his brother's not so subtle hint about not bothering the two of them.

As soon as they had closed the door to the bedroom behind them, Seto pulled Alistair into a deep kiss. This had been what he'd been looking forward to all day. The last two days really. It truly was funny just how profound of an effect Alistair had on him.

"I missed you too," Alistair said once they broke apart, his hands nestled against the back of Seto's neck.

"I know what you missed," Seto, not usually so forward, countered, smirking.

"Is that so?"

"I'll show you."

Afterwards, as they lay in bed, as always with Seto's head resting on Alistair's chest. While he absently ran his hand through the brunette's hair, Alistair realized that over the course of his time living at the mansion he'd grown to be happy. No, happy was too simple a word for the deep-rooted sense of well-being that he felt knowing that his days of aimless wandering were truly behind him. This was his life now: holding down a regular job, preparing for college in the fall, coming home to Trudy's cooking, maybe playing a game or two with Mokuba, reading with Sewell on his lap, and then going upstairs to sleep with Seto.

"I love you," he said, bringing Seto in for a kiss.

"Are you always going to say that after we do this? You're such a sap," Seto replied with a lazy smirk.

"Are you never going to say that after we do this? You're such a prick," Alistair retorted, but he wasn't in any way angry. A minute or so later he ventured to ask Seto to go slightly more in-depth into his adventures in Cairo.

"What did you do while you were there?" Seto mulled over how much he wanted to tell the redhead about what had happened. His first inclination was to say something along the lines of: _I just followed Yugi and his loser friends around while they deluded themselves into thinking we'd been sent back in time_, but in light of his recent realization that it had in fact happened and the knowledge that Alistair wouldn't think he was crazy, he decided to tell part of the truth, prefacing his statement with:

"If you say 'I told you so' you will find yourself living on the street. There was a tomb or something like that, and Yugi and the losers were all lying passed out on the floor in front of a huge stone tablet." Not sure how to go about explaining the next part of the story, he paused. Did he really want to admit to Alistair that he'd been right about magic all along? He finally decided not to—his pride wouldn't allow it.

"While I waited for them to wake up, Ishizu Ishtar bored me with stories about the past and about the pharaoh that Yugi's allegedly a reincarnation of plus the guy she says I'm the reincarnation of. Then she told me a fairy tale about the origin of the Blue Eyes White Dragon. According to her, Blue Eyes is actually the soul of a girl called Kisara." Seto furrowed his eyebrows. Talking about Kisara that way, like she hadn't even really existed didn't sit well with him.

"So you just sat around with Ishizu Ishtar and swapped stories?" Alistair did his best to keep the skepticism out of his voice.

"More or less. Then the dweebs woke up and Yugi decided to duel himself. He won, to the shock of no one, his loser friends got emotional, he gave a speech, and then Mokuba and I flew back." He chose to omit what had happened on the boat as well.

"Can't you just admit that you were wrong?" Alistair hoped that his tone was playful enough to prevent Seto from getting defensive. It wasn't. Seto sat up and crossed his arms.

"So you're saying that I'm lying to you about nothing magical happening? News flash: nothing magical did because magic doesn't exist." Alistair rolled his eyes.

"Whatever. Anyway, do you want to know what _I_ did while you were gone?"

"Pined after me, I think we already established that," Seto said, mollified for moment, lying back down next to Alistair whose chin was resting against his palm.

"Don't flatter yourself. No, I got invited by a friend of mine to some fair at the university next week for new students."

"Oh."

"Don't get too excited."

"What do you need to go to college for? You've already got a job."

"Yes, and I like my job, but I think college will be a good way to see if there's more to life than just the Dewy Decimal System."

"Hmm…"

"I hate it when you do that. Can't you just tell me what you're thinking instead of making me guess?"

"I was just thinking that if you want to 'broaden your horizons' or whatever, you could start traveling with me again. I have a trip to China coming up."

"I mean, yeah, that'd be fun, but I want to go to college too."

"Why?"

"I think it will be interesting: it'll give me the chance to meet new people and try new things, learn, maybe going will even help me figure out what I want to do for a career."

"You can do all those things without going to college. You want to learn something new? Read a book. You want to try new things? Tell me, I'll make it happen. You don't need to meet new people: people suck. And you don't need a career either; you aren't exactly wanting for money. Besides, you're too old to start now. The starting age for college is eighteen or nineteen." Alistair stared at him in confusion. The subject of college clearly bothered Seto, and this was far from the first time he'd tried to talk the redhead out of it, but Alistair had no idea why, only that it was very similar to how the CEO had reacted when he'd announced that he'd gotten a part-time job at the library.

"Why are you so against the idea? Just because _you_ didn't need to go doesn't mean it's worthless for everybody. We aren't all geniuses like you."

If Seto were completely honest with himself he'd have to admit that the notion of Alistair going off to college was unsettling. He'd have a whole life that didn't involve Seto and he could come to choose it over him, and Seto didn't want that to happen. He wanted Alistair for himself because the redhead was one of a very small handful of people in his life that he actually gave a damn about, and for the most part he isolated himself from the rest of the world with said handful of people. If they started to leave he'd be left alone.

He knew that 'clingy' was the most appropriate word to describe what he was feeling, but he rejected it on the grounds that it was such a pathetic emotion. No, he was merely protecting Alistair from the inevitability of getting hurt by anyone he could possibly meet at the university.

"I just don't want you to waste your time doing something you don't have to."

"How could learning possibly be a waste of time?"

"Can we not talk about this right now?" Seto leaned in to kiss Alistair who still looked far too inquisitive for his taste. Alistair chose to relent.

* * *

Mokuba, having never actually done it himself, had a limited knowledge of sex, but he assumed that after two hours of being locked in the bedroom Seto and Alistair would be done and therefore saw no harm in going to see if one or both of them wanted to either watch a movie or play a game or two.

"Can I come in?" he asked after knocking twice. Inside, Seto and Alistair froze, both extremely grateful that Alistair's face had been pressed into a pillow.

"…No," Seto said finally. There was another, longer pause.

"Oh…" Mokuba didn't know what else to say and quickly left the area, trying very hard not to imagine what was going on behind the closed door, traumatized by what he'd almost walked into.

Needless to say: having Mokuba almost walk in on them having sex quickly ruined the mood.

Mokuba meanwhile was sitting in his bedroom trying to forget what he'd almost seen. His computer dinged and he looked up at the screen where a request from Hilary to video chat had popped up. Grateful for the distraction, he accepted.

"Hey you," she greeted him, smiling and tucking a strand of long blonde hair behind her ear. "What's up? You look scared." He knew he wasn't supposed to tell anyone about Seto and Alistair, but Hilary was hardly 'anyone' and if he told her to keep it a secret he was certain that she would. Besides, he needed to tell _someone_.

"I almost walked in on my brother having sex," he explained morosely.

"Oh…yikes," Hilary replied sympathetically. She paused, then couldn't help adding: "with who?"

"If I tell you, you have to promise not to tell anyone else; Seto would kill me."

"Then maybe you shouldn't tell me." But she was dying to know. The way Mokuba was acting, she figured the girl Seto was sleeping with must be someone famous.

"No, it's ok; I trust you. Do you remember the first time you came to dinner here?" She nodded, wondering where he was going with the story. "And do you remember Alistair? The guy we were putting up?" She nodded again, though she wasn't sure what the connection was supposed to be. "He uh…he sort of still lives here."

"Ok?"

"That's um…he's sort of Seto's…that's who I almost walked in on him with." As the realization hit her, Hilary's eyes grew wide. Never in the almost four years she'd known who Seto Kaiba was had it occurred to her that he might be gay. Her friends would be shocked and devastated. "But like I said: you can't tell _anybody_. If anyone found out, Seto's afraid it would cause a huge scandal and he doesn't want to have to deal with that."

"Yeah, no, totally." Hilary was still trying to process what Mokuba had told her. "So he's like, dating this guy?"

"They wouldn't call it dating, but basically."

"Is that why he lives with you?"

"That's why he _still_ lives with us; but I wasn't making it up when I said he was a kind of a refugee. It was only supposed to be temporary since they didn't even like each other, but then I guess something changed."

"How do you feel about it?" she asked him curiously.

"About him dating Alistair or about Alistair still living here?"

"Both."

"Alistair's ok. He and I play games together a lot since Seto's always so busy, but sometimes I miss the way things used to be when it was just me and Seto. I know it's irrational, but I can't help but feel like he's starting to care more about Alistair than he does about me…" He lowered his eyes sadly, though he felt like the invisible weight of his secret fear had been lessened slightly by having said it out loud.

Hilary didn't know what to say. She could see plainly that Mokuba was hurting given how close to his brother she knew he was, but she was at a loss as to what she could possibly say that would make him feel better. She was an older sibling, like Seto, and not nearly as close to her sister, though she did care about her a lot. But if her sister were to start dating someone it would hardly bother her. Then she remembered that Seto was more than just a brother to Mokuba; he was his parent too, more or less. How would she feel if her parents divorced and one of them started seeing someone new? Betrayed maybe.

"I don't blame you for feeling a little betrayed since it's just been the two of you for so long, but I mean, don't you think he deserves to be happy like us?"

"Of course! But wait, do you think that the reason he doesn't like you is the same reason I kind of don't like Alistair?"

"He doesn't like me?" That was news to Hilary. Mokuba bit his lip. He hadn't meant to tell her that.

"It's not that he doesn't like you (which wasn't completely true given that Seto had said on several occasions that he found her vapid and ordinary); he's just cynical and he's convinced himself that you're going to hurt me."

"Oh. But doesn't that same logic apply to him too?"

"I don't see how Alistair _could_ hurt him; they're not like us."

"In what way?" Mokuba mulled it over.

"We have a real relationship; we go on dates, we hang out, we text, we have some of the same friends, we tell each other everything, that sort of thing. But I've never even really seen them look at each other unless they're arguing about something, let alone go on dates or anything like that. As far as I know their relationship is just them sleeping together." He figured there must be more to it than that seeing as how Seto had risked his life flying out to bring Alistair back to Domino, but he certainly wasn't privy to it.

"But I thought you were worried about him caring about Alistair more than you. If they're just sleeping together than I don't understand how he could."

"That's true…You're right, I'm being stupid."

"I wouldn't say _that_; you just miss your brother."

In Seto's room, he and Alistair were getting dressed while Seto continued to fret about what Mokuba may or may not have heard.

"He wouldn't have knocked if he'd heard," Alistair pointed out logically.

"I just don't want him to start thinking about us that way."

"I'm pretty sure he knows what we do in here; he's not stupid and we aren't always exactly subtle."

"Are you saying he's known about this for a while?" Seto asked, blanching. Alistair gave him a sympathetic look. For all of Seto's genius, he could be quite oblivious sometimes.

"What did you think he thought we did in here; play Duel Monsters?"

"Yeah, I guess…" He paused. "How long do you think he's known?"

"He's probably suspected since before we actually ever did it." Seto sat heavily on the edge of the bed, his black shirt still unbuttoned. He put his head in his hands and groaned. "Why is it such a big deal?"

"He's my little brother; I don't want him to think about me that way!"

"I'm sure he doesn't think about it; he's probably just as embarrassed by what happened as you are."

"Why aren't you?"

"Embarrassed? Why should I be? Granted, I'm glad that he didn't actually walk in, and that he probably didn't hear anything, but it's not like we were doing anything kinky."

"If it was _your_ brother…" But Seto suddenly realized what he was saying and stopped. "I'm sorry, that was insensitive." Alistair's face had momentarily darkened, but he quickly shrugged the comment off. He knew Seto hadn't purposefully brought up Mikey to hurt him. The exchange was a prime example of just how far they both had come since being together.

"It's ok; I know what you mean, and you're probably right. If the situation was reversed and it was Mikey that had almost walked in on us I'd probably be much more embarrassed than I am. Anyway, shouldn't we order food now if we want it to get here before nine?" Seto glanced at the display on his cell phone.

"Yeah, probably. Whose turn is it to pick?"

"Mokuba's."

"Great, that means pizza…" He made a face.

"For someone who doesn't like it you always eat an awful lot when we get it," Alistair observed.

"It's not that it tastes bad; it's just so unhealthy…"

"Until you cut back on your coffee intake you're not allowed to comment on what's healthy and what's not."

"That's the most flawed logic I've ever heard. Just because I do something that could be perceived as unhealthy doesn't mean I'm incapable of understanding what is and isn't healthy—it just means I don't abide by it in all cases," Seto said with an annoyingly blank expression as he buttoned his shirt up.

"I hate it when you do that."

"Do what, point out your horrible argumentation style?"

"Act like everything's a debate."

"I'm not debating; I'm simply saying that you can't make the argument that because I drink what you consider to be too much coffee, I shouldn't be 'allowed' to say whether something else is unhealthy or not. Your argument, if you can call it that, hinges on the supposition that someone who does something unhealthy is, for that reason, _incapable_ of comprehending what healthy and unhealthy things are in general which I think it's fair to say is false. Therefore your entire point is invalid."

"I hate you. Let's just go order the pizza." He started to walk towards the door when Seto put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

"Wait. Can you actually stay here or at least not come with me? I want to go talk to Mokuba. Alone. What do you want on your pizza?"

"Uh…pepperoni and pineapple."

"That will never cease to be disgusting. Fine. I'll call you when the pizza gets here."

"I'm going to go back to my room then."

"Ok."

"Good luck with Mokuba," Alistair said as they parted ways, Seto heading towards Mokuba's room, Alistair towards his.

"Thanks."

Mokuba was still talking to Hilary when Seto knocked on his door before entering. Both teens looked up at him.

"Oh, hi Seto," Mokuba said uncertainly.

"Hi," Hilary echoed, never sure how to refer to her boyfriend's intimidating older brother.

"I didn't realize you were busy; I'll come back later." He turned to leave.

"No, it's alright," Hilary insisted. "I should probably get going anyway; my mom's called me for dinner twice. I'll see you tomorrow then Mokuba?" she clarified.

"Yeah, four at the arcade."

"Sounds good. I love you, bye!"

"I love you too," he said, smiling as he ended the call. Turning to Seto he added: "what's up?" Seto took a moment to process that Mokuba and his girlfriend were at the 'I love you' stage of their relationship, which he took none too seriously, before answering.

"I wanted to talk to you about what happened earlier."

"Oh?" Mokuba asked uncomfortably, twirling a random pen off his desk between his fingers as a means of distraction.

"I think there should be a new rule: you're not allowed in that hallway if Alistair and I are in the bedroom." Mokuba, who already had no intention of ever going anywhere near that room ever again if he could avoid it, nodded.

"I think that's probably a good rule," he agreed. "But can I ask you something kind of personal?"

"That depends."

"Do you love him?" The question seemed to Seto to come out of left field.

"Where is this coming from?"

"I was just wondering because it seems like all you guys ever do is have sex." If Mokuba's initial question had surprised Seto, his follow-up conjecture positively floored him. He'd had no idea that that was what his brother thought of his and Alistair's relationship. Then again, he supposed that Mokuba had no way of knowing about what he and Alistair discussed or the experiences they had shared.

"That is really none of your business," he answered finally.

"It kind of is though. I have to share my house and my brother with him so I'd like to know why."

"Because he's important to me."

"Yeah, I get that; but how come? I mean, he's nice and he plays video games with me, but it's not like you and he do anything together except, well, you know. Or am I missing something?" He continued to fiddle with the pen without meeting his brother's eyes.

"Is that really all you think we do?" Seto asked incredulously.

"Well, yeah. Oh, and you also sometimes argue. Really loudly."

"I see now why that's the impression you have, but you're wrong," he said shortly. "I can't really explain it to you, but he's special to me, just like you are." He briefly reached up to touch the spot where his Duel Monsters locket usually was before he remembered he wasn't wearing it, but Mokuba recognized the gesture and wondered if Seto now kept a picture of Alistair in it alongside one of him. "Look, I don't expect you to understand. Maybe once you're older…"

"I happen to be in a relationship too," Mokuba retorted hotly. "So I understand that perfectly. What I _don't_ understand is why, if he's so important to you, you both act like you barely know each other. And I'm not talking about in public, I'm talking about in the house. I don't think I've ever seen you give any kind of indication that you and he are more than acquaintances when we eat together."

"What would you have me do?" Seto demanded, nettled. "I don't do public displays of affection, you know that. Anyway, I don't know why we're even having this conversation. You're the child and I'm the adult and so I don't have to explain myself to you. Now what do you want on your pizza?"

"Pizza?" Mokuba asked, confused.

"Yes, pizza. As in the greasy, fattening garbage we order every time it's your turn to pick what we have on Sundays. What would you like on yours?"

"Pepperoni," Mokuba answered slowly. "With breadsticks on the side and some of that tomato sauce stuff."

"Fine. I'll call you when it gets here." Before Mokuba could get another word in edgewise, Seto had turned on his heel and left the room, the door closing with a click behind him.

Mokuba let out the breath he'd been holding before leaning back in his desk chair. In the last year or so Seto had pulled the 'I'm older than you' card way more than ever before, but describing himself as not just 'an' but '_the'_ adult was something new and Mokuba had no idea why now that he was practically an adult too Seto was choosing to sound so much like a parent. Could it have anything to do with Alistair? And if the relationship that he and Seto shared was more than just a sexual one, what was the 'more?' What did they talk about? Did Seto tell Alistair things he'd never told _him_?

All of a sudden Mokuba realized just how jealous he was of the redhead. If Seto needed Alistair for more than just sex, then clearly he, Mokuba, was failing to meet that need, whatever it was.

It wasn't fair of him to want Seto to get rid of Alistair just so it could be the two of them again, like it always had been, when he would never dream of giving up Hilary, but he wanted that anyway. It was nothing against Alistair of course; he actually liked him, but he wanted what little spare time his brother had for himself.

It was ironic. After having hoped for ages that things between them would work out, now all Mokuba wanted was for them to fall apart.

* * *

As Britney explained her plan, Darren continued to nurse his third beer. After Alistair had left, Darren had decided to take a much more active role in the activism that went on around campus, and with the help of his journalism major roommate, they and their friends had been the spearhead of several exposés involving injustices at the university.

Now that they had graduated they had their sights set on doing an undercover job to blow the lid off of something major. After much discussion, they had finally set their sights on Kaiba Corporation, mostly at Darren's prompting.

It was no secret that big corporations often partook in shady practices in the name of turning a greater profit, but no one had ever managed to get anything on Kaiba's company, at least nothing that stuck. Darren was convinced that they could change that.

True to his word, he had not told anyone that Alistair had had any kind of romantic involvement with the famous CEO, but that didn't stop him from hating Kaiba for keeping Alistair from him. He was long over the redhead, but the relatively unjustified malice towards Kaiba remained.

His friends hadn't had any objections; especially not once they discovered that one of the higher-ups in the marketing department was looking for a secretary. They had all applied, but ultimately it was Britney who landed the job.

This had been her first day. While at the office, she had been careful to keep an eye out for anything that could be deemed an injustice, and by the time she left, she'd already racked up several, many of which had to do with the way the female employees were treated.

In his spare time Darren had looked into Kaiba Corp's public records, hoping to find something there, but to no avail, not that he was surprised. But he was sure with a little digging _something_ big would turn up, something that would cause a sensation.

They concluded their meeting by congratulating Britney and wishing her luck before going their separate ways for the evening.

* * *

**Author's Note: **This is, of course, is my own conjecture of what Seto and Alistair's domestic life would be like, but I think it's fair to say that Alistair would want independence, at least financially, from Seto, and Seto, because he's Seto, would continue to be the oh so lovable character he's always been, albeit one that's now opened his heart to two people.


	5. Three's A Crowd

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh!, I just like torturing, that is to say, borrowing the characters from time to time.

* * *

_"Son, brother, father, lover, friend. _

_There is room in the heart for all the affections, _

_as there is room in heaven for all the stars."_

Victor Hugo, _Funk and Wagnalls_

**Chapter 5**

After the Kaiba brothers' return from Cairo, Alistair noticed a shift in Mokuba's attitude towards him. Though he couldn't quite pinpoint an example, he had the distinct impression that Mokuba had come to resent him, probably because he felt that Alistair was stealing his sibling from him, which the redhead could completely understand, but he wished that Mokuba didn't feel that way.

In an attempt to get back into the teen's good graces, he'd taken to going out of his way to hang out with him and help him win several battles against Seto that had involved Mokuba wanting to stay over at a friend's house or go somewhere with Hilary.

"Hey Mokuba," he said, sitting next to him at the table for lunch one sunny day in mid-July.

"Hey." Mokuba forced a smile before returning to looking at his phone. After Trudy had served each of them what Alistair considered to be a ridiculous amount of sandwiches alongside a customary pot of tea, he tried a second time to make conversation with Seto's younger brother.

"I was thinking earlier about a game some friends taught me and Mikey a really long time ago. Have you ever played poker?" Alistair didn't usually talk about his brother, so the reference to Mikey was enough to get Mokuba's grudging attention. He looked up from writing a text to Hilary and said:

"I know what it is, but not how to play."

"I could teach you if you want. Maybe you, Seto, and I could all play together." Mokuba thought it over. It wouldn't give him any time alone with his brother, but then at least he'd get to see him.

"What kind of cards do you need to play?" Alistair was relieved that Mokuba was open to the idea.

"Just a regular deck of playing cards. The whole game is essentially about not letting anyone know how good or bad your hand is."

"Don't people who play poker usually use it to gamble?"

"Yeah. But you don't have to."

"Ok, I'll try it. But oh," he paused. "I'm not sure that we have a deck of regular cards…Seto and I used to, but Gozaburo got rid of it along with almost all our stuff and I don't think we bothered to replace it… "

"It's still early; I could go buy one. I wanted to go out today anyway."

"If you don't mind."

"No, it's not a problem." Mokuba pulled out his wallet to get Alistair some money, but the redhead stopped him. "I have my own money now, you know. I can pay for a deck of cards." Embarrassed, Mokuba shoved his wallet back into his pocket. "So I'll see you when I get back?"

"Um, yeah." The black-haired teen had become distracted by his latest text. "I'll see you later."

* * *

It was only once he got into the city that Alistair realized he didn't know where to look to buy a deck of playing cards and ended up popping into the library to ask if any of his coworkers had any ideas. One of the younger employees who worked in the library's cafe suggested he try the local game shop called Kame and gave him some quick directions. He thanked him and left.

After getting turned around several times, Alistair finally managed to find the shop. As he entered, a cheerful-sounding bell chimed overhead.

"I'll be with you in a moment," an older man's voice called from a back room. Alistair took the moment to look around. The shop was packed to overflowing with games and game-related merchandise including action figures, posters, and T-shirts. Duel Monsters however, seemed to be the stores' specialty. There was a huge display case of cards and booster packs as well as a display version of the newest Kaiba Corporation Duel Disk.

"Sorry, I was moving some boxes which at my age can take a while," the shop owner, a short squat man with spiky gray hair said, emerging into the main part of the store. He looked familiar but Alistair couldn't quite place where he'd seen the man before.

"If there are more boxes I could help you with them," he offered, still puzzling over where he knew the shop owner from.

"That's very kind of you young man, but my grandson will be home soon and truthfully, it's his job. Now, what can I help you with?" The mention of a grandson rang a bell.

"I was looking for a pack of cards."

"Duel Monsters cards?"

"Actually, no. Just regular playing cards."

"Really? I'll have to dust them off first. Almost no one plays with regular cards anymore."

At the same moment that Alistair noticed a framed Blue Eyes White Dragon card that looked like it had been torn in half before being taped back together and realized who the old man was, the door opened again, admitting a second short, spiky haired individual into the shop, though the newcomer was much younger. Alistair's eyes widened and he quickly turned his back on Yugi, lest the champion duelist recognize him.

"You're late," Solomon Motou chastised his grandson. "I had to move those boxes of Duel Disks by myself!"

"I'm sorry!" an out of breath Yugi apologized. "I was dueling Joey and lost track of time."

"Did you win at least?"

"Yeah, but he's gotten a lot better, especially with the help of the new cards he got from you."

"Well of course; with my advice no one can ever go wrong! Oh!" He turned his attention back to Alistair. "Sorry. Let me get…No. Yugi, can you show this young man where the playing cards are?"

"Playing cards? I didn't even know we had those."

"You would if you had stayed with me to do inventory like you promised instead of playing Duel Monsters with your friends. For future reference, they're right next to the dice. The regular dice."

"Ok, ok, I'll do inventory next time! Here, let me see…" He scanned the wall of jumbled games. "Ah! There they are! Is this what you were looking for?" The question was aimed at him directly so he couldn't not turn to face Yugi. He silently prayed that Yugi wouldn't recognize him.

With his eyes still lowered, Alistair took the standard poker deck and mumbled that he was sure they would do.

"Will that be all?"

"Yes." He set the cards on the counter and reached into his trench coats' inner pocket for his wallet. In the meantime Yugi had taken his place behind the register as his grandfather watched on. He rung up the deck which turned out to cost more than Alistair really wanted to pay but he handed over the money, wanting nothing more than to get out of there.

"Don't I know you?" Yugi had been trying to figure out from the moment he'd walked into the shop where he recognized the redhead from. Alistair froze.

"I…don't think so…I mean, I know who you are, but…" Yugi continued to stare at him intently.

"Doma," he said slowly. "You worked for Dartz, right?"

"Uh…"

"I didn't know that any of you were still hanging around Domino."

"Um... I'm only passing through." Yugi sensed Alistair's discomfort but falsely interpreted it.

"Oh, that's all water under the dam. I know that none of you were bad people; it was just the Orichalcos controlling you." Alistair gave a noncommittal shrug.

"I have to go…"

"Wait a sec! Is Raphael still around too?"

"I don't know. I don't think so," Alistair replied quickly. "I don't talk to either of them anymore."

"Oh, that's too bad. I always wondered what happened to him…Well, here are your cards. Do you want a receipt?"

"No, that's ok." If Seto found out that he'd gone to the game store where Yugi worked…

"Are you alright?" Yugi asked in concern. "You seem really jumpy."

"I'm just in a hurry." He took the bag that Yugi handed him and took off before Yugi could even give him his change.

He didn't slow down until he was halfway up the street. It was just his luck to walk into that particular store…If only he'd recognized Yugi's grandfather sooner. He hoped the visit wouldn't come back to haunt him. But honestly, what did it matter? There was absolutely no way that Yugi could have figured out based on their brief conversation that he was living with Seto. No, he would just write the situation off as a strange blip in his day and forget about it-at least that's what Alistair hoped.

"You're telling me that that was one of Dartz's Orichalcos warriors?" Solomon Mouto asked in disbelief. "He was so nice. He offered to help me move the boxes…" Yugi nodded.

"I didn't really have anything to do with him; I just know that he dueled and lost to Kaiba."

"Do you suppose that's why he's back in Domino? Unfinished business?"

"I don't know. I'm not even really sure why he was after Kaiba in particular in the first place, but the way Kaiba acted about it made it seem like it was personal. Do you think I should call him to warn him?"

"Do you think he'd listen to you?"

"I don't know, but he's my friend so I owe it to him to try."

* * *

Seto was just packing up his briefcase when Valarie paged him.

"What is it?"

"There's a Mr. Motou on the line for you sir." Yugi? What did he want?

"Put him through." He picked up the video call. Sure enough, Yugi Mouto's boyish face appeared on-screen. "What do you want Yugi? And talk quickly; I'm busy."

"Has anything weird happened recently?" Yugi asked cryptically.

"Define weird."

"Like, has anyone tried to hack into your system or bought up a lot of stocks?" Seto narrowed his eyes.

"No, why? And if you're trying to get me to go on another world saving crusade with you and the rest of your little pep-squad the answer is no."

"Nothing like that." Yugi hesitated.

"Spit it out!"

"One of Dartz's old henchmen came into the shop today; the one you dueled on your plane." Seto's pulse quickened. "I thought you'd want to know that." Had Alistair actually been stupid enough to walk straight into Yugi's house?

"I already know that," he answered blandly, his face blank. "Anything else?" Yugi was taken aback by Kaiba's air of indifference.

"Aren't you worried that he might try to finish what he started with or without the Orichalcos?"

"No. And frankly, it's none of your business." He hung up and swept the pencil holder off his desk out of irritation, causing pens to scatter across the floor. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and angrily speed-dialed Alistair.

"Yes?" came Alistair's wary voice from the other end of the line.

"Do I even need to tell you what this is regarding?" Seto asked coldly.

Alistair blanched and stopped walking. How could Seto know about that already? He couldn't. This had to be about something else.

"What's the matter? You sound upset."

"Really?" Seto snapped sarcastically. "And why might that be? It couldn't possibly be because you decided to pay Yugi a little visit today, could it?"

"How do you-?"

"He just called to warn me that you're back in town."

"He what?"

"Why did you go there?"

"I told Mokuba I'd teach him how to play poker, but neither of us could find any playing cards in the house so I offered to go buy some. I didn't know that Yugi worked there, I swear! I didn't even know that it was his grandfather's shop. Why would I go there on purpose?" Seto admittedly couldn't think of a reason. "What did you tell him anyway?"

"I told him that I knew you were in Domino already and that he should mind his own business!" Alistair quirked an eyebrow. Telling Yugi to mind his own business was probably not what Seto should have said if he wanted the other man to forget about it.

"I don't think it matters. He connected me to you but not at all in the way you're afraid of, so just calm down."

"Don't tell me what to do," Seto replied sourly. "Where are you anyway?" He could hear the occasional car in the background. "Don't tell me you're still lurking around that store!"

"Of course not!" Alistair snapped. "I'm not an idiot! I ran out of there as fast as I could! Not that I think Yugi was sitting there and on the verge of realizing that I'm-," he realized how loudly he was talking and lowered his voice. "That I'm sleeping with you. He just probably assumed that I'm back to exact my revenge on you."

"It doesn't matter what he's thinking; the point is that he's thinking about it at all." Truthfully, Seto was most afraid that Yugi would mention the incident to his friends who had all borne witness to his reaction to Wheeler making a joke about him having a boyfriend. He didn't in any way think that Wheeler or Taylor would be smart enough to make the connection, or even that Yugi would be; it was the girl he was worried about. She'd always seemed just a little more clever than the rest of the dorks.

"You're thinking too hard about this," Alistair said, snapping Seto out of his reverie. "And no matter what you do any potential damage has already been done."

"Yeah, because you were careless…"

"I didn't know!"

"Alright, fine. Maybe I am being paranoid, but can you just try to make sure you don't go walking into something like that again? For my sanity?"

"Ugh! Fine! But for the record: I think you're being ridiculous!" He kicked a pebble lying on the sidewalk and watched as it skittered across the pavement, coming to rest under a light gray car parked at the curb on the other side of the street.

"I appreciate your input. Are you on your way home?"

"Maybe, I don't know. I haven't just walked around downtown in a while; I might stay out for a bit, why?"

"I was about to leave work."

"Really? That's early."

"I don't have any meetings today, so I thought I could work from home."

"Mokuba will be happy. You should do something with him since you'll be home all day."

"Why do you say that? It's not like I never see him."

"He misses hanging out with you."

"What more does he want? The three of us just got back from New York!"

"Yeah, the three of us. I think Mokuba wants some time as just the two of you."

"What difference does it make?" For all his cleverness, there were some things that Seto simply couldn't grasp.

"Because you and I have a life together that he isn't a part of I think he feels like I'm stealing you from him." Seto furrowed his eyebrows. Why would Mokuba think that? His little brother had always been the one rooting for his and Alistair's relationship.

"Did he tell you that?"

"No, it's just the impression that I get from what he does say and how he's been acting around me recently. And to be honest: I don't blame him. He probably feels like we're keeping secrets from him given how often and for how long we lock ourselves in your bedroom."

"What does he want to do, watch?" Seto was quickly losing patience. "If that's really what he thinks he's being childish."

"Maybe if we were just a little more open about our relationship, he wouldn't be so resentful."

"Don't act like this is somehow my fault!" Seto said angrily. "And don't think that I don't know that this isn't about Mokuba; it's about you! You think that we should be more open about our relationship, you always have despite what I told you about how I feel about that!"

"This is so typical of you! This is about your brother missing you; don't turn it into something other than what it is! I am telling you: if you don't talk to him about this he's going to force you to choose between us and then I'll be the one that gets screwed over!" He kicked the base of a wooden utility pole sticking out of the side of the road so hard that for one horrifying moment he was afraid it might fall over.

"And this is so typical of you; always the victim. For all you know Mokuba's just going through the same anti-social phase as every other teenager in the world; did you think of that?"

"You know something? Now I know exactly how Yugi feels every time he tries to open your eyes to what's really going on. You are so insufferably blind!" He aggressively pressed the 'end call' button on his phone and very nearly heaved it at the ground. It was then that he realized that he had an audience: two teenage girls out walking a dog were openly staring at him from across the road. Angry and embarrassed, he flipped the girls off and stomped up the street, pretending that instead of the sidewalk, it was Kaiba's face he was tramping on.

Was taking what he said seriously really too much to ask of the brunette? Then again, Kaiba could in fact at that very moment be on his way to talk to Mokuba and just hadn't wanted Alistair to know he agreed with him. The mere probability of that being the reality was enough to incense Alistair further. He loved Seto but he really loathed Kaiba and was becoming fed up that he was forced to deal with both.

Seto was in fact on his way to speak to Mokuba. He wasn't sure whether to believe what Alistair had alleged or not and wanted to find out for himself. He knocked lightly on his brother's door after arriving home. When Mokuba didn't answer he checked the game room. Bingo.

Mokuba was sitting on the ground in front of one of his many game consoles playing a video game version of Capsule Monsters with pop-rock music playing loudly enough that Seto could hear practically every word of the chorus through the headphones his brother was wearing.

"Mokuba!" he said loudly, hoping to avoid startling him. Mokuba didn't even look up. Seto rolled his eyes, crossed the room, and tapped him on the shoulder. The teen predictably jumped.

"Seto! You scared me!" he exclaimed, pulling the headphones off and laying them aside. "What are you doing home so early?"

"I thought I'd work from home today," Seto explained absently, looking at the screen. "You still play that?"

"Yeah, why wouldn't I?" Seto shrugged.

"You just haven't talked about it in a really long time. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to discuss."

"Is this about me staying over at Hilary's? Cuz I swear: nothing happened! We just watched movies and-."

"No, it's not about that," Seto cut him off. "It's about Alistair."

"Oh." The tone Mokuba used and the slight wrinkle to his nose weren't lost on Seto and were enough to let him know that it wasn't all just in Alistair's head.

"I thought you liked him." Mokuba bit his lip. He'd been hoping that no one would notice his newfound resentment of the redhead.

"I do, but….you spend more time with him than you do with me, and when you do decide to hang out with me it's always the three of us, never the two of us…like it used to be. I've been your brother a lot longer than he's been your boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend."

"What would you call him then? A friend with benefits?" Mokuba's voice was uncharacteristically mocking.

"Look: you have no right to interrogate me!" Seto snapped, his eyes narrowing. "Anyway, what do you care about me spending time with you? You've got your little group of friends and a girlfriend last I checked. You wanted me to back off, remember? So what's this about you being jealous of me spending time with him? Especially given that I just took a week off of work to go on vacation with you. That's awfully selfish of you. I thought I taught you better." Seto couldn't believe that Mokuba didn't want him to be happy.

Mokuba looked up at his brother who was standing with his arms crossed, his face a mask of anger to hide the betrayal he felt at having the person he cared about the most force him to feel guilty about his own happiness.

"I'm not trying to be selfish," the teen started, chagrined, avoiding making eye contact. "I guess that I just miss us being well…just us. And I know that that's stupid since I have a girlfriend and other friends and I can't explain it, but I…" He couldn't put into words how it made him feel to know that Alistair knew things about Seto that he didn't, or even simply that he knew things about Seto that until he'd come along had just been between them. "I'm sorry," he finished lamely. To his surprise, Seto lay a hand on his shoulder, causing him to look up.

"You will always be the most important person to me and no one could possibly replace you." He took his hand off his brother's shoulder, resting it on the locket around his neck. He clicked it open. "But he's important to me too." He flipped the locket around so that Mokuba could see that it contained photos of both him and Alistair.

It was enough to make Mokuba realize that perhaps his feelings of jealousy had indeed been unfair and selfish. He stood and hugged his brother around the waist though he knew he was getting a little too old to do so and pressed his face against Seto's upper chest. Seto marveled at how much the kid had grown in the last year without him noticing as he hugged Mokuba back.

* * *

Alistair had managed to calm his rage by the time he'd stomped all the way back to his motorcycle; fueling ones anger can be exhausting. He had no idea where Seto found the energy to be so angry all the time. He contemplated what to do with his afternoon, finally deciding to stop by the library to pick up something to read before driving up the mountain to go sit on top of the ruins that he'd found.

On his ride to the library he passed several buildings belonging to the university and felt a rush of excitement at the prospect of being a student in the fall despite Seto's protests. He still didn't understand why the brunette was so against it.

He was interrupted in his browsing through the fiction section a little while later by Zoe.

"Haven't you read them all already?" she asked, giggling. "I don't think I've ever seen you without a book in your hand."

"Just making up for lost time," he answered vaguely with a small smile, finally selecting a book titled The Amulet of Samarkand. "What are you doing here? I didn't know you worked today."

"I don't, but it's the only place I can really study; the university libraries are all either too crowded or too quiet; this is the perfect balance. And also, there's no wifi to distract me."

"I didn't know you were a student. What are you studying?"

"Women's studies," she said. "And psychology." Alistair didn't know what 'women's studies' meant, but the psychology part interested him.

"You're studying psychology?" Seeing that she had his attention at last she sat on the arm of one of the comfy patchwork arm chairs scattered about.

"Yeah, I'm a junior. It's really interesting; I love it. I want to be a counselor at a high school." He wasn't sure he could imagine that, but he was so intrigued that he refrained from saying so.

"What exactly do you do in your classes?"

"Well, I have to take a bunch of classes that are completely unrelated, but for my Psychology major I've taken some science and some theory based classes, but obviously the theory classes are more interesting. Learning about the human brain as a structure and memorizing the different parts and what they do and why is boring, but I like everything else. What's your major? Wait, don't tell me; let me guess: something to do with books."

"Oh, I haven't started yet. My first semester is in the fall." She was taken aback. She'd assumed that she and Alistair were roughly the same age.

"Wait, you're in high school?" she asked incredulously.

"Huh? No."

"Oh, you took a gap year. Gotcha. I thought about doing one of those, but my parents only agreed to pay my tuition if I started right away and I figured it wouldn't be much of a gap year if I had to spend it working. Ironically though, they made me get this job for real world experience after saying no to a gap year in which I would have gotten just what about you? Why'd you decide to take a year off before starting college?"

"To be honest I wasn't sure I would get to go at all," he started. She settled more comfortably into her chair and motioned for him to go on. "I mean, I never even thought about it until really recently. It was the last thing on my mind growing up…" He stopped talking, not particularly wanting to discuss his childhood with her, though she wasn't stupid enough not to notice his exotic looks and therefore put two and two together.

"You're from…oh wow. I'm sorry. Still, it seems like your family's done well." He crinkled his eyebrows.

"What makes you say that?" His confusion took her aback.

"I mean, you always dress really well and wear nice cologne so I just assumed..." He suddenly realized that she thought he was rich and was horribly embarrassed by it yet he couldn't deny it without seeming like a snob.

"We do alright," he said nonchalantly, trying to shrug the moment off and resolving never to let Seto pay for clothes for him ever again.

"So what's in the bag?" she asked him, sensing that her previous statement had made him uncomfortable.

"Nothing anymore; I was going to use it to protect any books I got, but it seems like I'll just stick with this one." She tilted her head to read the logo on the plastic bag.

"Isn't that where Yugi Motou works?" she asked.

"You follow Duel Monsters?" he said in surprise.

"My ex-boyfriend got me into it. I don't play, but I watch all the tournaments and I have a few cards. I even have a duel disk, but I only got it because there was a picture of Seto Kaiba on the box and I have a huge crush on him." She giggled. "So are you a fan?" He blanched.

"Of Seto Kaiba?"

"No." She laughed again. "Of Duel Monsters." She paused and placed her right index finger over her lips thoughtfully. "Or of Seto Kaiba I suppose." He tried to keep his expression impassive as he replied.

"I used to play. It's been a while though…"

"Did you watch the Grand Championship Tournament?"

"Yeah."

"I really wanted to go, but I ended up just watching on TV with a couple of friends. I'm not going to lie though; mostly I think we just watch because of all the cute duelists. I was so happy that Kaiba ended up dueling after all." He smiled weakly.

"Yeah, he's definitely pretty good…"

"Pretty hot you mean."

"Um…I guess…" he answered evasively. She got up from her perch and swatted his arm.

"Oh come on, just because you have a boyfriend doesn't mean you can't look. Or are you telling me that you don't think Seto Kaiba is completely drool-worthy?"

"I…uh…" He hated himself for not being able to hide his emotions without a mask to shield his face. How did Seto do it? "He's ok looking." Alistair was clearly flustered and Zoe was dying to know why. Her curiosity was written all over her face, so before she could probe any further he decided it was time to go; the last thing he needed was for her to somehow figure it out. "I've got to go. Good luck with studying!" He slipped past her before she even had a chance to say goodbye and practically fled, not slowing his pace until he reached the check-out counter.

* * *

Seto contemplated calling Alistair to see where he was and when he was coming home, but decided not to for two reasons: one, that would make him seem desperate and clingy and two, after their argument he wasn't sure the redhead would pick up the phone and that would just be pathetic.

Instead, he sat forward in his desk chair and tried to tune back into the data report he was supposed to have been reading. Numbers had always made far more sense to him than people anyway.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Three things:

1. **Mokuba**. Seto and Mokuba have always been just Seto and Mokuba with other people merely flitting in and out of their lives which had led them to develop an unhealthily co-dependent relationship. Mokuba is going to have to wrestle with the concept of sharing his sibling, just as Seto had to come to terms with Mokuba having a close relationship that wasn't with him-namely with Hilary.

2. **Yugi**. Despite Seto never acknowledging it, Yugi has long since considered Seto his friend, so of course he's going to want to look out for him. Since he didn't know Alistair, it seems logical that despite what he might say, he'd be wary of his intentions, particularly with Alistair acting so cagey.

3. **Zoe**. Zoe, like Darren, represents the outside world so to speak. She doesn't know Seto except as a public figure that she finds attractive, something completely out of Alistair's frame of reference since he knows Seto very well.


	6. Fun, Vodka, and Card Games

**Disclaimer: **This may come as a shock, but Yu-Gi-Oh! isn't actually my original idea.

* * *

_"Let's make a night you won't remember_

_I'll be the one you won't forget." _

_~ Timber_, Pitbull feat. Ke$ha

**Chapter 6 **

As was always the case when he got caught up in a book, Alistair failed to notice the passing of time until his stomach growled. Glancing at the digital clock display on his cell phone he realized with a start that it would be dinnertime soon. He packed the book back into the bag he'd gotten from Yugi's grandfather's shop, stuffed his phone into his pants' pocket, and prepared to climb back to the ground and return to the mansion.

He was surprised to find that he was the first to sit down to dinner.

"Where are Seto and Mokuba?" he asked Trudy curiously as she dished out slices of lasagna.

"Up in Mokuba's room still." She sounded annoyed. "I've called to tell them that dinner's ready four times already and with you late too I was about to give up altogether and scrap the whole thing; it's only good when it's hot after all."

"I'm sorry; I just lost track of time," he apologized.

"Yes well, do try not to in future; it puts me off schedule. And could you possibly drag your not-so-better-half and his brother down here?"

"Sure." He slunk off, ashamed that he was part of the cause of her displeasure. Upon reaching the door to Mokuba's room he was surprised by the dead quiet; usually when Mokuba gamed it could be heard halfway down the hallway. He knocked lightly and tipped the door.

"Mokuba, Seto, Trudy wanted to know if you guys are coming to dinner. Guys?" He stepped into the room. Seto and Mokuba had barely looked up from game of Capsule Monsters they were playing. "Is that a no?"

"We'll be there in a minute," Mokuba said absently, his hand hovering over the holographic board, contemplating his next move.

"Ok." Feeling that he was, in a sense, trespassing, he retreated to give Trudy the message. "They're in the middle of a pretty intense game of Capsule Monsters," he explained after taking his seat at the table.

"Seto playing an intense game? I'm shocked." Trudy sounded cross. "Did they say when this 'intense' game would be finished?"

"In a minute." She shook her head, causing several strands of silver hair to come out of her bun.

"Well, _you're_ here at least; eat up while it's still hot." She gestured towards the lasagna on his plate.

"I will. Thank you; it looks really good."

"It's my mother's recipe," she told him with a small smile. "Bon appetite."

Alistair was almost done with his portion by the time Seto and Mokuba emerged from upstairs.

"Who won?" he asked curiously.

"Seto," Mokuba answered predictably. "But it was a _really_ close game!" Seto rolled his eyes.

"You _think_ it was close."

"Since you're feeling so confident why don't you play a game with _me_?" Alistair suggested, taking another bit of lasagna. "You ever played poker before?"

"Oh yeah," Mokuba said, remembering suddenly that that was why Alistair had left in the first place. "So you got the cards?"

"Yeah. From Yugi's grandfather's game shop," Seto answered for him sourly as he sat down, the momentary pleasure he'd gotten from winning quickly ebbing.

"Hey, I told you already that I didn't know that!" Alistair snapped. "Anyway, what do you say? After I teach Mokuba the rules, how about the three of us play?"

"Why would I?" Seto asked in a bored tone. "I only play games of skill. If you want to play a game of luck ask Wheeler to join you."

"Sounds to me like you're just afraid you'd lose," Alistair taunted him, winking at Mokuba when Seto wasn't looking as the Kaiba brothers prepared to dig into their servings of lasagna. Seto raised an eyebrow.

"Do you honestly think your pathetic excuse for manipulation will work on me?" Alistair shrugged.

"It got you to Duelist Kingdom. All I did was threaten to buy up your company and you came running." Mokuba snorted into his forkful of noodles. Seto unconsciously set his jaw.

"That was completely different. You were threatening my company."

"Ok, how about this: play against me and Mokuba or I'll take over Kaiba Corp, with Mokuba's help of course." Seto rolled his eyes again as he chewed. As soon as he swallowed, he replied to Alistair's far from serious threat.

"What is the point of playing a game I already know I'll win?"

"What if you guys dueled instead?" Mokuba suggested with his mouth full. "I'd love to watch that." He knew that his brother missed Duel Monsters even if he didn't say so, and Alistair _had_ been good enough to almost beat Seto twice.

Alistair looked uncertainly at the CEO, knowing that the popular card game could be a touchy subject. Seto thought about it. He hadn't dueled without there being anything more than his pride at stake in quite some time, and Alistair wasn't untalented when it came to the game. It could be (_dare he even think it?_) fun.

"Not today," he said finally. "I don't duel without preparing first. Tomorrow maybe. But we'd have to set some parameters." He contemplated it for the rest of the meal while Mokuba and Alistair talked about what Seto considered to be trivial things. It was only after he was done eating that he spoke again.

"Are you sure you want to duel me again?" he asked Alistair, a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. Alistair was a little taken aback that Seto was actually interested, but quickly got over his surprise.

"Of course. I have to prove that I'm on your level with or without the Seal of Orichalcos!"

"You're a lot of things Alistair, but you're not even close to being on my level."

"We'll see about that!"

"Can I set the parameters?" Mokuba asked unexpectedly. Alistair and Seto looked over at him. "Just to make it more interesting. It'd be boring if you guys used the same decks you used before. I say you both make new decks out of the cards in our collection. And as a handicap I say that Seto can't use Blue Eyes."

"Why, are you saying you don't think I can take his dragons?" Alistair asked, pretending to be offended.

"No Blue Eyes, huh? Interesting…I like it. It's settled. Alistair: I challenge you to a duel at my duel dome this weekend. Mokuba will set the deck parameters which so far include a ban on the Blue Eyes White Dragon."

"You're on," Alistair replied with bravado. "I'm gonna take you down this time Seto Kaiba!"

"I'd like to see you try," Seto retorted smugly.

As the redhead and brunette exchanged a few more obligatory insults, Mokuba watched on with a small smile. As jealous as he was of Alistair's relationship to his brother, he couldn't help but be glad that Seto had someone to bring out the person he had been back before they had been adopted by Gozaburo.

After running out of bravado-filled comments to hurl at each other, Seto and Alistair made their way to the bedroom to engage in a much more physical pursuit. Since banning Mokuba from the hallway, Seto had relaxed more when it came to sex and as a result they had become more adventurous, though Seto's favorite position remained having Alistair on his back.

"We could never get away with doing this at your office," Alistair commented, still trying to catch his breath as they lay draped across each other in bed afterwards.

"Who said anything about trying?" Seto snapped, the heat rising in his face as Alistair's statement conjured up memories of the one and only porn movie he'd ever masturbated to.

"I wasn't serious." He glanced sideways at the brunette. "Wait, is that like, a fantasy of yours?"

"What? No. I don't have fantasies," Seto replied with dignity, his cheeks growing warmer still. Alistair raised a skeptical eyebrow but chose to let the matter slide…for the time being.

* * *

While he was settling in for a few hours of gaming before bed, Mokuba reflected on how ridiculous his dislike of Alistair had been. Sure he wasn't horribly fond of the idea of having to share Seto with anyone, but on the other hand he had on occasion benefited from having the redhead around, and he did like him. He was fun where Seto was serious and open-minded where Seto was not.

As he loaded a fantasy adventure game, he realized that at the bottom of it all he was mostly just afraid that something would go wrong. He knew, probably better than his brother did himself, that if Alistair broke his heart, Seto would never trust anyone again, maybe even including him, and that worried him. Not so much because he thought that Alistair would hurt Seto on purpose, but suppose that he stopped loving him? Or worse yet, fell for someone else. Seto wouldn't be able to handle it, of that Mokuba was quite certain.

An hour or so later and no doubt after Alistair and Seto had presumably…Mokuba tried not to think about it, the redhead knocked lightly on the door to the game room before letting himself in. If he hadn't been so actively attempting to avoid thinking about what Alistair and Seto did behind the closed door of Seto's bedroom, Mokuba would have voiced his resentment that the other two thought it was fine to just walk into his room whenever they felt like it whereas he wasn't even allowed in what he had come to think of as 'their' hallway.

"I was just wondering if you still wanted me to show you how to play," Alistair said, holding up a deck of Duel Monsters cards. Mokuba couldn't tell if the redhead was serious or not.

"I know how to play," he replied, trying not to sound too resentful on the off-chance that Alistair wasn't making fun of him. Alistair was momentarily confused before he realized what Mokuba was thinking. He pulled the top card off the deck and flipped it so the front side was facing Mokuba.

"They're just regular playing cards. But since Duel Monsters is so popular it's no surprise that someone would have the sort of clever marketing idea of making the back's look like Duel Monsters cards." If he would have looked more closely at the box the cards had come in he would have realized that the person with the 'sort of clever marketing idea' had been Pegasus himself.

"Oh. Yeah, I still want to learn. Hang on; let me find a save spot." Alistair watched Mokuba's avatar on screen crashing through a jungle landscape, fighting off several monsters before finally bursting into a clearing with a glowing yellow ring in the center onto which it ran causing a menu with a save option to appear.

After exiting out of the game and turning the consol off Mokuba turned back to Alistair, looking expectant.

Mokuba turned out to be equally as quick at picking up games as his brother so it didn't take Alistair long to teach him the basics of poker.

"Wouldn't this only work if you had more than two people though?" Mokuba asked.

"Yeah. I was thinking we could get Seto to play too." Mokuba still wasn't used to someone else calling his brother by his first name.

"I don't know…He didn't seem interested earlier…"

"He's in his office, right?" Mokuba nodded. "I'll go get him. Hang on."

Predictably, Seto was sitting at his desk reading through the conference notes from the marketing department's meeting from that afternoon.

"Why don't you take a break from that?" Alistair asked, leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe. Seto looked up, smirking.

"You're so demanding." Alistair shrugged and entered the room. He came up behind Seto and started massaging his shoulders.

"You look like you could use a break," he said, leaning down and kissing along the side of Seto's neck. "Come upstairs." Seto regarded the report on his screen. There were only twenty pages left. That wasn't undoable.

"Hmm…I suppose I could just finish reading this tomorrow morning…"

"So you'll come?" Seto smirked again.

"In a manner of speaking." He got up and pushed Alistair into the wall behind him. As he leaned in to kiss him however, Alistair pressed a finger against the brunette's lips, effectively stopping him.

"We don't want to keep Mokuba waiting."

"Mokuba?" Seto asked, his lip curling back in disgust. "That's sick Alistair." Alistair stared at him in momentary confusion before he remembered that Seto knew nothing of his real intent in coming downstairs.

"I didn't mean it like that!" he said quickly. "What kind of person do you think I am? He and I just wanted to play poker with you. I taught him a version where you only need three people." Seto suddenly realized that he'd been tricked. He sighed.

"Fine."

"And afterwards I thought you and I could play a different game."

"What game?" Seto asked warily.

"I haven't decided yet."

* * *

They made for interesting poker players, Mokuba, Alistair and Seto. And who won ultimately came down to the way that they placed bets. Alistair and Mokuba were prone to taking bigger gambles which, if they won, paid off. Seto on the other hand was much more calculating about how many pieces of candy (what they ended up using in lieu of poker chips) to bet on each round and also had a much better poker face than the other two and in the end he won, though not by the margin he would have liked.

"Well that was stupid," he announced as Alistair shuffled the deck and put it back in the box.

"I thought it was fun," Alistair shrugged and Mokuba agreed.

"I don't know why; you both lost."

"Does the expression 'it's not about whether you win or lose; it's how you play the game' mean anything to you?" Alistair asked.

"No." Mokuba laughed.

"Seto doesn't play games for fun; he plays to win! And he always does," the teen explained, looking fondly at his older brother. "Only people like us play for fun."

"What do you mean 'people like us?'"

"The people who know they'll never win anyway," Seto answered for him, his tone condescending.

"If that's the case than I'd sooner lose every game I ever play than build up a reputation as a winner. Never having fun while playing a _game_ doesn't seem very enviable to me."

"That's the kind of thing a loser says," Seto countered with a sneer.

"When you duel Yugi and lose, do you consider it a waste of time?" Mokuba's eyes widened. He couldn't believe that Alistair had the nerve to bring up Seto's duels with Yugi; that was dangerous territory. Seto was taken aback as well; no one had ever directly brought that up to him before except Pegasus. He narrowed his eyes.

"What's your point?"

"You didn't answer my question. Do you think that dueling Yugi is a complete waste of time because he wins?" Seto set his jaw in preparation for delivering a dismissive, sarcastic retort. "Never mind. Don't answer that; but think about it." Suddenly Mokuba had a flash of insight into what it was about Alistair that Seto liked. Unlike most people, Alistair wasn't afraid to challenge Seto and to push back against the brunette's abrasive persona. Joey Wheeler and Yugi Mouto tried, but Joey always lost his cool and Yugi was in the unfortunate position of having defeated Seto in three duels, one of which had been broadcast to the entire world and was therefore not a person Seto was likely to listen to.

He thought about it some more after Seto and Alistair had gone. He was starting to grasp Seto and Alistair's relationship, though there was still a piece he didn't understand. Did his brother think of Alistair as attractive? Mokuba figured he must, else the two wouldn't be sharing a bed, yet he couldn't wrap his mind around it. How could a man be attractive the way a girl was? He mentally compared Alistair to Hilary and came up blank.

* * *

Meanwhile, in Seto's room, Alistair was trying to convince Seto to agree to a plan he'd come up with after their conversation in the game room.

"Why would I want to get drunk?" Seto asked, crossing his arms. "It shrinks your brain, it makes you act like an idiot, it makes you throw up, and it gives you a headache in the morning."

"It would loosen you up."

"I don't want to 'loosen up.'"

"Deep down, wouldn't you like to be able to relax? No one could possibly enjoy being as uptight as you are all the time."

"Yeah, well, _I_ do."

"Bull. Your back is so tense it's like trying to massage a boulder."

"So don't try to massage it."

"That's not the point and you know it."

"Could you do us both a favor and stop trying to change me? Can we just go to bed? I have to finish reading that report tomorrow." Alistair sighed in frustration. He knew that _he_ was right and that Seto was just being pigheaded for the sake of being right. And he wasn't about to let the brunette get away with it.

"I challenge you to a duel!" Seto yawned.

"We're doing that on Saturday at the Duel Dome."

"What, are you scared to lose?" he taunted. "Come on, it wouldn't be anything official; we don't even have to use duel disks. We could make a drinking game out of it. Take a shot every time you lose life points or something like that." Seto regarded Alistair critically.

"Do you actually care about me having fun or do you just want to get me drunk?" he asked suspiciously.

"Both," Alistair answered honestly.

"I don't even have alcohol."

"Sure you do. Down in the wine cellar." Seto tried in vain not to let his confusion show on his face. Alistair gaped at him. "You didn't know you had one?"

"Of course I did," Seto lied. The truth was that he didn't know all that much about the mansion given that he only frequented a handful of rooms, but he wasn't about to admit that to Alistair. Alistair had half a mind to give Seto a good long lecture on the obscenity of having a house so big you don't even know what all the rooms in it are, but knew that it would be a waste of breath.

"Of course you did. Anyway, so what do you say? I could run down and grab a bottle of something. It would only take a minute…" Seto thought it over. He didn't much care for being manipulated by Alistair, nor did he want to get drunk; a state that would force him to lose control. That being said, his deep-rooted competitiveness balked at the idea of turning down a challenge. _Alistair, you are such a horrible influence…_

"You are aware that you're going to lose, right?"

"I'm actually pretty sure that we won't finish the match."

"Oh please. Are you suggesting that I'll become so inebriated I won't be able to duel? Don't make me laugh." With a much better poker face than he'd managed while they'd been playing the card game Alistair said:

"We shall see."

While down in the Kaiba mansion's wine cellar (which contained much more than just wine as he discovered) Alistair began to question his plan. All of the things that Seto had said about alcohol were true after all, but not only that; he was suddenly concerned by the idea of introducing alcohol to someone in a very good position and mindset to abuse it. But would he? The brunette was not one to let go of control lightly which led him to believe that Seto probably wouldn't ever touch the stuff again. But then again, if he got a taste of what it felt like to let go…

Ultimately Alistair's curiosity outweighed his concern. He was extremely interested to see how Seto would behave under the influence of the large bottle of vodka he eventually selected.

When Alistair returned with his deck and the vodka, Seto suggested that they duel in the library so that they wouldn't bother anyone if (as was all but inevitable while playing Duel Monsters) it got loud.

It occurred to Seto as they were setting up the dueling mats that he'd had to dig around in the game room for ten minutes to find that this would be the first time that he'd be playing Duel Monsters "for fun" since… he couldn't remember when.

"I think I'll go first," Alistair said once everything was ready, scanning his hand before drawing a card.

* * *

Within ten minutes of each of their respective first turns Alistair defeated Seto's Vorse Raider with his KC-1 Crayton. Tightening his jaw at being the first one to lose life points, Seto aggressively twisted the lid off the bottle of vodka and brought it to his lips, intending to take a defiant swig. But as the first drops of the cool liquid trickled into his mouth it was all he could do not to spit it out. How could people _endure_ such a vile-tasting drink long enough to get drunk from it? Trying and failing not to make a face, he drank as much as he could tolerate before setting the bottle down hard. He coughed as the vodka burned his throat.

"You ok?" Alistair asked in concern, wishing he would have had the foresight to tell Seto not to chug it like that. Seto swallowed several more times, a strange heat in no way caused by embarrassment creeping up his face, before saying:

"Of course. It's _my_ move!"

Several rounds and a few ego trips later, Alistair was down to 1700 life points and Seto was down to 2200, but because of the way that they'd gone about dealing damage (Seto taking large chunks at a time and Alistair gradually chipping away) Seto had had way more to drink than Alistair; the way the latter had planned from the beginning. Not that Alistair wasn't his fair share of wasted.

He was hard pressed to admit it, but Seto was starting to have some serious trouble focusing on the duel. Not only was he finding it difficult to keep his strategy straight, his depth perception was way off causing him to keep knocking cards off the table.

With an unnecessarily dramatic gesture, Alistair played his Swords of Revealing Light magic card, effectively freezing Seto's two Blue Eyes White Dragons. Under any other circumstances, the move would have left the brunette very annoyed indeed, but as it was he didn't feel remotely ruffled since he'd just drawn a card that could circumnavigate the effects of Alistair's swords. He smirked, but there was no real malice behind it.

"Say goodbye to your magic card!" he declared triumphantly, slapping his own card onto the table.

"Not so fast!" Alistair parried with a trap. "Not only is your magic card destroyed, but my trap saps 500 of your life points! Now we're even!" It was the redhead's turn to flash a smirk. Again, normally such a move would have really pissed Seto off, but he was—could it be?—having too much fun for it to bother him. He obediently took another shot of vodka (which incidentally had stopped tasting terrible five rounds ago) and turned back to Alistair.

"Good move," he said without the tangible sarcasm that usually would have accompanied such a remark.

"Thank you." Alistair's lips curved into a smile. It was then that Seto realized Alistair's hypothesis about them not finishing the match had been correct.

* * *

Mokuba was jolted awake by a loud and resounding crash. Sleepy and disoriented but concerned he listened intently. He heard laughter and someone saying: 'shhh', then silence. Irrational as he knew it was to think so, Mokuba got out of bed and crept to the door, scaring himself into believing that the mansion had been broken into. He cautiously entered the hallway and tiptoed to the end where he pressed his back against the wall, knowing that if he peeked around the corner there was a good chance that whoever was there would see him. His heart pounding, he snuck a quick look which, as it turned out, alleviated his fear, but at the same time seemed almost stranger than if there had in fact been burglars.

Peering around the corner again, he was able to see that his eyes had not deceived him. Lying sprawled against the landing were Seto and Alistair who had presumably fallen down the stairs, resulting in the crash that had woken him up. But they weren't just sitting there or, it seemed, making any effort to get up. They were heavily making out while Alistair unbuttoned Seto's black shirt.

Mokuba stared; rooted to the spot by morbid curiosity. Seto currently had an arm wrapped loosely around Alistair's waist, his lips pressed against the redhead's. It was only when Alistair had finished with Seto's shirt and worked a hand into the brunette's pants that Mokuba decided he didn't want to see any more.

Trying to process what he'd just borne witness to, he got back into bed. There was no question in his mind that the two were drunk, though the realization startled him. As far as he knew Seto had never had alcohol before let alone gotten drunk. He wondered what had possessed him to try it _now_.

Through the haze of alcohol and lust clouding his judgment, Seto thought, albeit dimly, that perhaps he and Alistair ought to move to the bedroom. But just as he was going to say something about it, Alistair started to go down on him and he opted to wait. Then he forgot. He tangled his fingers in Alistair's thick red hair before leaning back and closing his eyes, occasionally letting out small sighs of pleasure.

Something about being drunk seemed to change the sensation, and when he came he felt more tired afterwards than usual, but that didn't stop him from wanting to please Alistair too. After readjusting his boxer-briefs, he pulled the redhead up for a kiss, biting his lip before delving further, slowly pushing Alistair onto his back and causing his hair to fan out against the dark wood of the landing like a pool of blood.

Seto reached down and began feeling Alistair up through his jeans. Alistair tipped his head back so that it was hanging over the edge of the top stair, exposing the sensitive skin of his upper neck to clue Seto in as to where he wanted to feel his lips—for the moment.

Seto managed to one-handedly unbutton Alistair's pants, releasing some of the uncomfortable pressure that had started to build up and pull them down enough that he could work his hand inside, though he paused briefly to spit into his palm first. He teased Alistair with just the tip of his index finger causing the redhead to moan against his mouth.

"Can you be quiet?" Seto asked with a lazy grin.

"Yeah," Alistair promised, his voice husky, angling for a final kiss before Seto began working his mouth down the length of the redhead's tone body.

True to his word, Alistair kept quiet, though he had to bite down hard on his bottom lip in order to do so.

"Sit up," Seto said, the cramped landing more problematic than he'd thought. Alistair hastened to do so, banging his head on the banister in the process. The pain was quickly alleviated by the intimate massage that Seto offered him.

Once Alistair too had climaxed, they both lay back against the wall of the landing, completely spent.

"We should go upstairs," Seto pointed out as Alistair awkwardly pulled his pants back up.

"Let's rest a little first," Alistair countered, noting how hard it was to keep his eyes open. Seto agreed, also suddenly realizing how exhausted he was. Just a quick nap to give himself the energy to climb the remaining stairs and get into bed…

They didn't wake up until Mokuba almost tripped over them the next morning.

* * *

**Author's Note: **I will be the first to acknowledge that getting falling down the stairs drunk and fooling around with someone on the landing when Mokuba could (as he did) easily walk in on it is out of character for Seto who is, if not always stoic, pretty damn put together most of the time. But that's the point of the chapter. Because of Alistair he IS different, and he's slowly starting to give into the idea that fun is a thing he's allowed to have.

Also, a quick disclaimer: in real life, I wouldn't recommend drinking as a means for solving any problem. It's a drug and should be treated as such. It only works in fiction because the author can control how it effects people, and to what extent. Alcohol ain't really the answer kids, not in real life!


	7. Scandal is an Importunate Wasp

**Disclaimer: **If I owned Yu-Gi-Oh! you can bet your bottom dollar that the series would have gone in a very different direction...

* * *

_"Sometimes you don't understand_  
_Sometimes I am what I am_  
_Sometimes I just can't be_  
_Everything you hoped I'd be_  
_And sometimes I wish that you could see_  
_I'm not like you I'm not like them_  
_I won't pretend cause I am what I am_

_~I Am,_ Dope

**Chapter 7**

Mokuba was more than a little taken aback when he went to walk downstairs only to see that Seto and Alistair were blocking the way. To his relief they were dressed save for Seto's shirt being unbuttoned. Alistair was leaning against the wall with one leg dangling over the top step and his mouth half open and Seto was curled up awkwardly with both legs off the landing and his head in Alistair's lap.

Since he couldn't go downstairs without stepping on them unless he wanted to go the long way around, Mokuba had no choice but to wake them up. He cleared his throat loudly several times but finally realized he'd have to do more. He climbed down to the landing and prodded Seto in the side with his foot.

"Seto, get up; you're in the way," he said when his brother merely cracked his eyes open before closing them again and pressing his face more comfortably against Alistair's lower stomach.

Suddenly something clicked in his brain (the part that wasn't starting to pound) and he sat up quickly and instantly regretted it.

"Mokuba," he croaked angrily, coughing. "What are you doing here?"

"You're in the way," Mokuba repeated.

"In the…?" Something else clicked and he realized for the first time that he and Alistair were still lying on the landing (though how they'd ended up there in the first place was fuzzy in his memory). Humiliated, he shook Alistair roughly. Alistair groaned and shoved Seto away.

"No," he grumbled, scrunching his eyebrows.

"Get up," Seto snapped, his own voice unnecessarily loud in his ears.

"Why?" Alistair snapped back, wincing as he sat up properly and was hit by both a throbbing headache and a crick in his neck. He noticed Mokuba standing over them and struggled to make sense of the scene, finally, like Seto, coming to the realization that they hadn't made it to the bedroom last night and had in fact spent the entire night on the landing after one of them (he wasn't sure which) had tripped, causing them both to fall over which he'd found pretty funny at the time. "Oh."

"Excuse me," Mokuba said after the silence dragged on for almost thirty seconds. He climbed past them and walked down the stairs without looking back. As soon as Mokuba was out of sight Seto turned to glare at Alistair, but Alistair cut him off before he had a chance to start.

"Don't. This is not my fault." Seto flared his nostrils but kept his mouth shut. Slowly the two of them half climbed, half crawled up the six steps leading to the hallway and into Seto's bedroom. Too exhausted to change into his pajamas, Seto peeled off his clothes and fell into bed, Alistair only half a step behind him.

* * *

"Good morning Mokuba," Trudy said cheerfully as she brought the teen his usual breakfast of blueberry pancakes and syrup.

"Hey," he greeted her, debating whether or not to tell her about Seto and Alistair getting drunk the night before. This was one of the times when the lines between employee and mother-figure blurred in his mind when it came to Trudy. She sensed that something was bothering him, taking the matter out of his hands.

"What's wrong?" she asked, sitting beside him. "You look like you're brooding about something."

"It's nothing. None of my business anyway."

"Did Seto and Alistair get into another fight?" As fond as she was of them it annoyed her to no end how often they quarreled, particularly around Mokuba who, given his adoration of Seto, would probably end up taking a lot of relationship cues from them.

"No, the opposite actually."

"Oh?" But Trudy wasn't sure she knew what he meant. Feeling like a tattling child, Mokuba explained:

"They got really drunk last night and fell down the stairs which woke me up, and when I went to go see what had happened they were lying on the landing and…doing stuff." He made a face. "And then this morning when I got up they were sleeping on the stairs until I woke them up." It took Trudy a few moments to process that.

"Well, I suppose that explains the half empty bottle of vodka and two decks of Duel Monsters cards scattered all over the library this morning and why Seto didn't come down for breakfast."

"It was just really weird. Seto's never gotten drunk before." She took in Mokuba's expression of distress mixed with disappointment and pursed her lips.

"I'll certainly have a word with them once they finally drag themselves downstairs, but Mokuba: Alistair and Seto are adults, and if they want to drink, they are at perfect liberty to do so, though I'm not saying I approve, not at all. Especially if they're falling down the stairs from it. That being said, I agree that…" She paused to find a word. "I agree that… _canoodling_ on the stairs for anyone, particularly you, to see was completely inappropriate. Do they know that you saw?" He shook his head.

"I don't think so."

"Then perhaps you ought to inform them that you did and that it made you uncomfortable. Knowing Seto that should be enough to resolve the matter. But don't behave like a child about it or he'll treat you like one. And I certainly wouldn't recommend you acting like them doing this is somehow a disappointment to you. You knew just as well as I do what they are to each other."

"Ok, but that doesn't mean I want to _see_ it!"

"Mokuba: you are far too old to whine; it's not at all becoming. Now eat your breakfast."

As the teen drenched his pancakes in syrup, Trudy made the decision not to tell him about the newspaper article and to wait for Seto.

Seto and Alistair slept for the better part of the early afternoon, finally getting up at a quarter to two and even then only very reluctantly.

* * *

"I am _never_ doing that again," Seto declared as he brushed his teeth for a second time, determined to get the horrible taste of day-old vodka out of his mouth. "I can't believe I let you talk me into that!"

"At least you had fun though, right?" Alistair pressed, towel-drying his hair.

"Not in the slightest." In fact, he had, and though he supposed the alcohol was partially to blame, a lot of it had to do with Alistair. Mostly he shouldn't wonder, though the vodka was a good excuse to hide behind. He knew that he would never lose to Alistair in Duel Monsters which took the edge off, but he still had to work in order to win which made it, well, fun. And even though what they had done afterwards was, objectively, pretty ridiculous and completely undignified, that had been fun too.

"I can't believe we were able to fall asleep right there." Seto shrugged. He was still trying to figure out what, if anything, he wanted to say to Mokuba about that. But before he dealt with his brother he knew he had better check his messages; he'd noticed that he'd missed 16 phone calls which could only mean one thing: someone had screwed up and needed him to come straighten out their mess.

"I'll meet you downstairs," Seto told Alistair after the redhead had gotten dressed. "I have to figure out what's going on at headquarters."

"Alright. Do you want me to have Trudy go ahead and fix you a plate?"

"Yeah. And coffee too. I won't be long." Alistair nodded and made his way downstairs as Seto looked through his list of missed calls which included five from Roland, several from PR and his secretary, and three from his lawyer. He narrowed his eyes. What could have happened that would require his lawyer to get involved? After taking a pill for his headache, he called Roland.

"What's going on Roland?" Seto asked brusquely as soon as the man picked up.

"Where have you been?" Roland asked, taking Seto aback.

"I'm the one asking the questions here. _What happened_?" Roland had been up all morning trying to appease the various departments while anxiously waiting for his boss to either show up or call him back. He couldn't believe that Mr. Kaiba hadn't seen yet.

"Are you familiar with the magazine _Out Loud_?"

"No, what is that?"

"It's one of the most nationally prevalent gay publications. They just released their new issue this morning and the main article is about KC and it isn't very flattering."

"Is that all?" Seto started to relax. Bad press in some obscure magazine wasn't anything to get worked up about.

"We've been getting phone calls about it all morning. You're going to have to say something."

"What does the article say exactly?" Seto asked, already crossing the room to look it up on his computer.

"The author is some girl who apparently worked for us for a few months in order to conduct an investigation into our business practices. In the article she claims that Kaiba Corp is a hotbed of sexism, homophobia, and racism."

"And we care because?" he pressed, already on the magazine's website and clicking on the article.

"Because she has the data to back it up." Seto began scanning the article, which was dramatically titled: _Exposing the sexism, racism, and homophobia of Kaiba Corporation_.

"I'm on my way," Seto said shortly. "Get the head of PR, have Valarie call my lawyer back and have him meet us in the boardroom in an hour and a half. And after you do that, pick up a copy of this magazine for me."

"Yes sir!" As soon as he got off the phone with Roland, Seto finished reading the article which was almost ten pages long and detailed the experiences of the author, someone named Britney Whinnery, at Kaiba Corporation.

She described the disproportionate female to male ratio with women making up 68 percent of the total employee count, which she said "would be a good thing were it not for the over-sexualized uniforms female employees are forced to wear for the amusement of the men. Furthermore, despite an overwhelming female presence, less than 5 percent of the highest paid Kaiba Corp employees are women." The paragraph was accompanied by photos of several female and male KC employees, contrasting the short skirts and revealing blouses of the women to the much more conservative suits and polos of the men.

The second section of the article denounced Kaiba Corp's lack of diversity, and the third, the lack of a policy preventing an employee from being fired based on their sexual orientation or transgender status.

The politically correct, whiny tone of the article caused him to roll his eyes several times, but once he'd checked her numbers against the KC database and saw that they indeed matched up he felt himself growing livid. This was not good.

"Seto?" Seto whipped around. Alistair was standing in the doorway looking concerned. "Did you hear?"

"Did I hear what?" Seto snapped. What _now_? He noticed that Alistair was carrying a newspaper. "What?" Alistair bit his lip before holding the paper up. The headline read:

_Out Loud Slams Kaiba Corp_.

"How is that possible?" Seto breathed, snatching the paper from him and scanning the article which was essentially an abridged version of the longer _Out Loud_ story.

"Is it true?" Alistair asked tentatively, not sure he wanted to know the answer.

"Is what true?"

"What that girl wrote." As distracted as he was, Seto couldn't fail to notice the expression on Alistair's face.

"I don't have time to get into this with you right now Alistair," he replied, retreating into his closet to get dressed. Alistair followed him.

"So it is true. How could you run a company like that?"

"Because I don't _care_. It makes no difference to me what the female employees are wearing or not wearing, whether or not there's female representation in management, what color anyone is or whether they're a man, a woman, or a robot." He angrily pulled on a pair of black jeans.

"How can you not care? If this is true, that means that your company is perpetuating some really unsavory and outdated policies."

"Look, if I had known that it would be this big of a deal I would have done something about it. These numbers have Gozaburo written all over them. Do you honestly think that I personally had a hand in oppressing the women at KC or making sure to keep diversity down? Gozaburo was the sexist, racist bastard, not me. And it's not like I'm not going to deal with it _now_." Alistair started to say something but Seto cut him off. "Look: since when have I ever cared about what's right and what's wrong as long as I get what I want? So a few women have to wear short skirts, big deal. At least they have jobs. This Britney Whinnery woman just wants some attention and decided that the best way to get it would be to write a little sob story."

"That's really how you feel about this?"

"Are you actually surprised?"

"No. Disappointed."

"It doesn't really matter what I think at this point; I have to change it regardless. And now it'll probably cost me a lot of money."

"You and your money," Alistair muttered disdainfully.

"Yes. Me and my money. The money that paid for you to be here, that's going to pay for college for you and probably Mokuba too, _that_ money."

"Please. Even if all three of us went to the most expensive university in the country for four years it'd hardly put a dent in your fortune. What's the rest of it for; cars, trips, toys? Face it: you could use the money you have to do really good things, but instead you just spend it on yourself! And beyond just that, you don't even care who you have to step on in order to do it!" Alistair was working himself up into a fury, very similar to the fury he'd felt towards Kaiba before he knew him.

"This isn't exactly news to you; I've always been like that! I never said that I wasn't or pretended to be the noblest person to ever walk the earth like Yugi does. I'm not the good person you seem to think that I am!" He angrily picked the newspaper off the floor of the closet and threw it at the redhead. "That's who I am; deal with it!" He continued to get dressed while Alistair stared at him.

It was true that living with Seto had, to a certain degree, caused Alistair to forget just who it was that he lived with. _Seto _was a good person. Kaiba was not. And unfortunately, it was Kaiba that ran the corporation. Did being with the CEO make him a hypocrite? He was after all reaping the benefits of a lifestyle he didn't agree with. But it wasn't the benefits that had kept him at the mansion—it was Seto.

"Seto," he said finally, causing the brunette to look up from snapping on his silver gauntlets.

"What?" Seto asked warily.

"I'm sorry."

"For what? I know how you feel about my company." Given that, he oftentimes wondered why Alistair bothered staying with him.

"For always acting surprised when something like this comes up. It's not fair for me to be angry with you for being yourself. _I'm_ the one with the problem."

"Then why do you stay with me? I'm exactly the kind of person you say you hate. You told me once that it's because of people like me that the world is rotten. So why are you here?"

"Don't ask me to try to explain that."

"Well that sure fills me with confidence," Seto snapped sarcastically and Alistair could practically feel the brunette putting up a wall around himself again.

"It's complicated."

"No. I don't think it is." Alistair didn't like Seto's tone. "You've tricked yourself into thinking that I'm someone that I'm not. Someone who gives a damn about other people, someone who does the right thing. _I'm. Not_. I'm not like you! I'm an egotistical, manipulative, calculating, selfish asshole. I do what's best for _me_. And at this moment what's best for me is to go lie to a bunch of reporters and tell them that I'm oh so grateful that this issue has been brought to my attention and that I'm going to make it gets fixed." He snapped his second gauntlet in place and grabbed his Duel Monster's card locket off a small shelf to his right.

"You're not Gozaburo."

"Excuse me?"

"You're not your step-father, Seto. You spent two duels trying to convince me of that, and now that you have, you're suddenly saying that you are. _Gozaburo_ didn't care about anyone but himself; but _you're not like that_. I know you love Mokuba and I…Well, I like to think that you care about me too. I don't know why you seem to think that doing good things makes you somehow weak or whatever it is that you think it does. And no, I'm not happy that these things are true and that you're only going to fix them because you have to, and I know that that aspect of who you are as a businessman isn't likely to change, which is not your most attractive quality by the way, and I'm horribly hypocritical for being with you, but I don't care.

God only knows that you're one of the most difficult people to get along with that I've ever met, and you can be a lot of the things that Gozaburo was because that's what you were taught, but you also turned Kaiba Corp into a gaming company because you don't believe in war any more than I do, and you opened up a chain of amusement parks that you let orphans visit for free because you want to make their lives just that much better. Your step-father would never have done either of those things."

"What's your point?"

"I just don't understand why you don't apply the goodness that I know you have in you to more aspects of your life."

"Is it your life's mission to turn me into some kind of saint? Because if it is, then you're welcome to go back to hating me," Seto replied finally and Alistair sighed in annoyance. Seto realized that he'd have to demonstrate to the redhead that he had in fact been listening and wasn't really blowing off _everything_ that he'd said. He crossed to the doorway where Alistair was standing and cupped the redhead's face in his hand.

"Look at me," he commanded and Alistair looked up from glaring at the floor. "I appreciate your opinion. This could potentially get ugly and I'm glad to know that I've got at least one person in my corner. I know that you don't agree with everything that I do, and I'm not ever really sure why, given that, you stay with me, but I'm glad that you do." He kissed him then, knowing it was bound to be the only pleasant experience he'd have that day between trying to figure out what to do about the article and then actually doing it. He wished he could just press pause on all of that and stay in bed with Alistair all day instead. But alas, that couldn't be, and eventually he had to end the kiss and continue getting ready for work before leaving for the KC skyscraper.

When he arrived, he was greeted by Roland who filled him in on the mayhem that had been ensuing all day. They'd had hundreds of angry calls and emails, most of which targeted the company as a whole, but many were directly aimed at Seto himself.

"We've managed to discern two main categories," Roland explained as he and Seto made their way towards the conference room. "One is people who are mainly calling and writing to agree with the article and demand that we address the points the author raised, and the second is people, mostly parents, complaining about your status as a celebrity and a role model. They're concerned that," he pulled up an email on his phone as they rode the elevator up to the twelfth floor, "'_by running a company that treats it's female employees like second class citizens and sexual objects, Kaiba Corp and Seto Kaiba are sending the message that this is acceptable behavior. As a role model, Mr. Kaiba should not be encouraging young girls to dress like porn stars in order to get a man's attention. Furthermore, he shouldn't be promoting the objectification of women to his male fans.'_"

"That doesn't even make sense," Seto said angrily, deeply annoyed that someone could send what was clearly supposed to be a sanctimonious message so full of faulty logic.

"Most of them are like that."

"Terrific." The most irritating thing about the whole situation was that he couldn't simply resolve the matter by pointing out all of the flaws in the accusations because that would only serve to further piss off the people spewing them, which wasn't what he wanted, which meant he was going to have to kowtow to their holier-than-thou bullshit.

"Sir, before you go in there, there's one more thing you should know." Seto didn't like the tone of Roland's voice.

"What is it?"

"Schroeder Corp has issued a statement. I'm sure that PR will bring it up in full, but essentially, Mr. von Schroeder has reached out to the editors of _Out Loud_ on their online forum to say that he finds KC's practices abhorrent and that he and his company would never do something as archaic as treat it's employees with such disrespect."

"_Siegfried_," Seto snarled. He could just see the pink-haired businessman sitting out on some beach, laughing in delight at KC's plight while he issued the statement. He was clearly going to attempt to use the situation to drum up positive press for his own company. It was the kind of thing Seto would do if the situation was reversed, but as it was it just added to his already bad mood.

Representatives from the company's legal and PR departments as well as Seto's personal lawyer, Eske Uedo, crowded the conference room. They all started up talking as soon as Seto entered, flanked by Roland. He refrained from speaking until he'd taken his seat at the head of the table. One glare was all it took to effectively shut everyone up.

"How much of this can we deny?" he asked. One of the legal department representatives spoke up.

"Not much as far as we can tell," he said. "Unfortunately, her numbers add up."

"And she was allowed to write this? I thought all employees had to sign a confidentiality agreement."

"They do. But that only covers revealing product information to rival companies or posting it on the internet, publishing it in newspapers etc. All the data she used is available for the public to access."

"And the pictures?"

"Those are fine too. She blurred out the faces as well as the background."

"So you're telling me that there isn't anything we can do to discredit her? Nothing at all?"

"I'm afraid not sir, at least not based on the information we have so far."

"Who is she?" he demanded. This time it was one of the PR reps who spoke.

"She's a recent graduate of Domino U who's been quite present in the local activism scene for the last two years. This isn't her first exposé. We have copies of some of her other articles, most of which are from University publications, however, several are from local newspapers. This is the first time she's been involved in something this big though."

"I'll make sure it's the last," Seto said through gritted teeth. There was no way he was going to let some do-gooder nobody ruin _his_ reputation. "Has anyone from the inside said anything?" he asked warily, not quite able to stop himself from noticing that of the fifteen people in the room, most of whom were quite high ranking, only one of them was a woman, and from the looks of her she wasn't anyone with any kind of power—just an assistant he guessed.

"Not yet sir, but it would probably be best if we held some kind of meeting to address this." Seto nodded. He'd expected as much.

"Fine. How about tomorrow." The PR representatives exchanged glances.

"Would that leave enough time for you to prepare sir?" one of them asked tentatively. Seto narrowed his eyes.

"Of course or else I wouldn't have suggested it. Roland! Get a memo made up scheduling an emergency company-wide meeting with the heads of all of the departments for three-fifteen tomorrow."

"Sir?" Seto locked eyes with the timid-looking girl from the PR department. The girl felt a bit queasy as the intimidating CEO's icy gaze fell upon her. "Um…if what the girl said in her article is true, than wouldn't that mean that a meeting with the department heads would be mostly men? Shouldn't there be some women there too since what was said is mostly about them? And maybe some minority and LGBT representatives as well?" Seto regarded her coolly.

"That's a good point," he glanced down at her nametag, "Jade." She looked deeply relieved. "You can be one of them. Roland: in the memo, ask that each department head bring a couple of women, ethnic minorities, and LGBT reps with them. I want to settle this from the inside out. And make sure that this meeting is common knowledge."

For the next three hours, Seto and the PR and legal reps hashed out how best to prevent any further damage and how to address the issue publicly. Ultimately, Seto decided he wanted to go head to head with the girl who had written the article. He _said_ that he wanted to appear to sympathize with her position, but the real reason was that he wanted to be able to look into her eyes as he ripped her apart. No one messed with his company without paying dearly for it.

* * *

At their cramped apartment, Britney, Darren, and a large group of friends were celebrating their victory. Operation KC had been more of a success than they had ever dreamed it could be, due mostly to the fact that they'd so meticulously spread the story around, first alerting the local newspapers of the upcoming exposé, then taking to the internet.

"To our amazing reporter!" Darren said, raising his beer.

"To Britney!" everyone chorused while she laughed.

"You guys are acting like I did this all by myself! I couldn't have pulled this off without you!"

"So what's next?" a girl named Sharron asked. "Or should I say: who's next? If we can take on Kaiba Corp we can take on anybody!" Just then the phone started to ring.

"I'll get it," Darren offered. It wasn't often that they got calls on their land line. Assuming that it would just be a telemarketer, he picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

"Who is it?" Britney asked as Darren's expression became concerned.

"It's for you," he said. She got up. Before he handed her the phone, he added: "it's Kaiba Corp." Feeling suddenly nervous, she took the phone from him. It had never really occurred to her that she could get into trouble for what she'd done. They'd done everything they could to make sure that they couldn't get sued for anything that had been said, but she supposed they could have missed something.

"Hello?" she said, trying to sound business-like.

"Is this Miss Britney Whinnery?" a smooth female voice asked.

"Yes." Darren motioned for everyone to be quiet and Britney discreetly put the call on speaker.

"I'm calling on behalf of my boss, Mr. Seto Kaiba. He'd like to extend his gratitude for the issues your article brought to light. Here at Kaiba Corp we value any information that could lead to making our company better."

"I'm glad that he feels that way." She hoped her voice didn't contain any trace amounts of sarcasm.

"He would be very grateful if you agreed to meet with him for a press-conference we plan on holding next week so that he can personally clear up any questions you might have regarding your time as a KC employee."

"I…"

"You don't have to make a commitment yet; we just wanted to extend the offer to see if you might be interested."

"I'm interested, but I'll need some time to think about it."

"That's understandable. We've drawn up a proposal which has been sent to the email address you provided to _Out Loud_ that I believe is connected to a website you run."

"That's right."

"If you could kindly read through it and then send us back your decision by noon tomorrow that would be greatly appreciated."

"Yes, I will."

"Excellent. We look forward to hearing from you Miss Whinnery. Goodbye." The line went dead. Everyone in the room stared at her.

"I guess this isn't quite over yet," Darren said, more to break the silence than anything else. "It seems like your article did enough damage to get _him_ involved. That's a good thing, right?"

"No, it's a very bad thing," Britney's boyfriend Eric said hotly. "Everyone knows Seto Kaiba's reputation. He'll tear her apart if she goes."

"What can he do?" Darren argued. "We have the truth on our side. Our data is real, her story is real. To be honest: he's the fool for wanting to talk to _her_."

"He's not stupid; don't you think he knows that by now? I don't trust this. It's a set-up."

"Why don't we read through the email they sent first?"

"Isn't anyone going to ask me what _I_ want to do?" Britney snapped. "I want to read the email and then decide if it's a bad idea." She stalked over to her laptop and pulled up her email as everyone crowded around.

It was fairly straightforward. Kaiba wanted to meet with her in order to discuss a press conference they were planning on holding the next week where she would be free to ask him direct questions regarding her concerns about KC's practices.

"I don't like this," Eric repeated. "The turnaround is too fast. That magazine comes out this morning and the same day he's emailing you saying he wants to meet up for a friendly little chat? Something's up."

"Either that or he's just being cocky," Darren pointed out. "By contacting her right away he probably hopes that we'll think he's got something on us and back down. But what he doesn't know is that it doesn't matter because I've got something on _him_." The pronouncement was met with stunned silence.

"What?" Britney asked incredulously.

"Let's just say that he and I have something in common besides our devastatingly good looks."

"I don't follow…"

"Do you remember Alistair?" She and several other people nodded.

"He and Kaiba were seeing each other."

"They were seeing each other? You're joking." He shook his head.

"Nope. He was even living with Kaiba who I guess also helped get him his pilot's license."

"We can't threaten him with that," Eric said firmly. "He'd sue us into the ground. Even if you had proof that'd be a really dangerous threat to make."

"It wouldn't have to be a threat necessarily; it could just be a sort of an FYI. An 'I know what you did last summer' kind of a thing. Just so he knows better than to try anything funny."

"How sure are you that Alistair was telling the truth?" Britney asked.

"Babe, you're not seriously considering using that, are you?" She set her jaw.

"I don't want to, but I also don't want to be made to look like a fool so that he can save his own ass."

"He was telling the truth alright; he was a terrible liar. Besides, he didn't want to tell me; I figured it out." A short dark-haired young man spoke up:

"Is it our place to threaten someone with something like that though?"

"Dhan: he's going to try to discredit her to invalidate the entire thing; I think that gives us permission to pull some underhanded tricks ourselves, don't you agree?"

"_I'm_ not comfortable using something like that," Britney said slowly. "But I'm not _completely_ against it. Darren: why don't you come with me? I don't want to go by myself anyway."

"To the meeting?" She nodded. "If I go by myself I'll just get nervous and say something I shouldn't or cry or both. I never met him while I worked there, but the way everyone talks about him…I don't want to have to talk to him on my own."

"Of course I'll go with you."

* * *

By the time he left KC headquarters that night, just a little before eleven-thirty, Seto had a horrible headache. He'd dealt with his fair share of controversy over the years, particularly in the last two and a half, so he was confident that this too would blow over; it was only a matter of paying off the right people, but it was tedious and exhausting.

Both Mokuba and Alistair met him at the door leading from the house to the garage.

"What are you going to do?" Mokuba inquired the moment Seto got out of his car. Seto closed his eyes.

"Please don't ask me about that right now Mokuba; my head is going to split if I have to think about that for one more second. I had Roland send you an email with the notes from the meeting. Read _that_ if you want to get caught up." Mokuba wrinkled his nose but said nothing. He'd gotten the email, but had been hoping Seto could give him the abridged version so he wouldn't have to wade through the twenty-seven page write-up.

"Are you ok?" Alistair asked in concern; Seto looked completely worn out.

"I'm fine. I just want to take a shower and go to bed. Stop interrogating me!" Mokuba and Alistair exchanged glances as Seto stalked past both of them.

"I'll find out what's up and I'll tell you tomorrow morning," Alistair promised, turning to follow Seto upstairs. Behind his back, Mokuba made a face. Had the redhead not been there, _he_ would have been the one to get Seto to talk.

* * *

By the time he got to the bedroom, Seto was already in the shower, and Alistair opted to join him.

Seto was standing with his face up against the spray, rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers.

"Don't ask," he said sharply without opening his eyes as Alistair closed the door to the shower behind him.

"I won't," he promised, allowing the warm water to drench him. He knew that Seto wouldn't be able to resist complaining about whatever had gone down for much longer—he just had to wait. Sure enough, within several minutes, Seto began telling Alistair what had happened, ending with:

"She'll regret the day she decided to tangle with me!"

"I've no doubt." Seto couldn't tell if Alistair was being sarcastic or not and chose not to respond. "I'm sure you've already thought about this," Alistair added, "but on the off chance that it hasn't occurred to you: you are aware that tearing her apart at a press conference isn't going to solve the problem, right? The publicity that her article has gotten isn't going to go away even if you manage to discredit her given that everything she said is true."

"You're right: I _have_ already thought about that. But if I hold this press-conference I can kill two birds with one stone: her, and her allegations. My plan is to tell her how right she is and how hard I'm going to work to rectify the situation. But make no mistake: even though she'll see it as a victory, the moment she so much as drops a gum wrapper on the street I'm going to make sure her life becomes a living hell!"

"Why? Because she dared to point out KC's shortcomings? Grow up." Alistair's harsh tone took Seto aback, but he quickly regained his composure. Narrowing his eyes he said:

"You're supposed to be on my side, not hers!"

"Well, I'm not. But because I care about you I'm going to support you. _You_, not necessarily what you do. I'm not Mokuba: I don't just blindly champion every decision that you make, you should know that by now." They glowered at each other, but underneath his façade of annoyance, Seto wasn't unhappy that Alistair disagreed with him. The fact that the redhead had a mind of his own and was willing to call Seto out when he was wrong was something that Seto appreciated, albeit deep down. Alistair knew it too, and yet, here they were with the same song and dance as ever; both pretending that they were angry just to save face. It was ridiculous, but he didn't really mind, usually.

While they were getting ready for bed after getting out of the shower, Alistair noticed that Seto kept rubbing the back of his neck. After he'd done this several times, the redhead began to get annoyed by the fact that Seto wouldn't just tell him he wanted a massage.

"Lie down," he said irritably, and Seto looked up at him, startled by Alistair's tone.

"Why?"

"You're obviously really tense. Let me do something about it." Seto would have been inclined to think the statement was sexually charged were it not for the fact that Alistair knew better than to try and take control in that context.

"Ok?" In truth, the motion had been habitual; his neck and upper back were almost always sore after a combination of hunching over a computer and being forced back into ramrod-straight posture whenever he was walking around.

He got on his stomach on the bed and Alistair sat down beside him and began trying to work the knots out of the CEO's back.

"Doesn't this hurt?" Alistair asked, amazed by just how tense Seto's back (which had already cracked several times) was.

"Kind of." But he didn't tell Alistair to stop and after a few more minutes it started to feel perfectly delicious. Alistair felt Seto start to relax and was able to be a bit gentler.

"Where did you learn how to do this?" Seto asked with mild interest.

"I didn't. I'm just guessing based on where I get aches in my back. Does it feel good?"

"Yeah." They were both silent after that save for the occasional appreciative grunt from Seto every time Alistair managed to work out one of the knots between his shoulder blades; the place he stored the most tension.

Finally, Seto rolled over onto his back so he was looking up into Alistair's face. He reached up to tuck an errant strand of red hair behind his ear. Alistair took the cue and leaned down to give the brunette a kiss, which, as was almost always the case, eventually turned into something more. He never understood why it was that they took a shower knowing perfectly well they were just going to get sweaty almost immediately afterwards.

To Seto, sex, like swimming, had become a means of escaping not only his inner monologue, but the stress of being Seto Kaiba. When he and Alistair had sex, nothing else mattered.

He wondered briefly afterwards, once the redhead had already fallen asleep nestled up beside him, if that would always be the case. Would there come a time when that would no longer work?

Rolling over so that he was facing Alistair's sleeping form he couldn't imagine that it would, then again, he was sure that most people thought that when they first got together with someone, yet divorce wasn't uncommon, break-ups either. But he had never been 'most people' and Alistair wasn't either. Surely _they_ would be different.

At this point he couldn't imagine life without Alistair in it any more than he could imagine life without Mokuba and it scared him a little. Unless he was having one of _those_ days he didn't worry about his little brother abandoning him, but sometimes he couldn't help but think that one of these days Alistair would wake up and realize that he didn't love him anymore. That they were too different. That Seto was too selfish. He wasn't sure that he could handle it if that happened. Alistair had left him quite defenseless when he'd worked his way into his heart. If he were to leave, Seto was certain that he would break, and that knowledge made him very uneasy.

_I really am selfish_, he thought to himself as Alistair rolled over in his sleep, closer to Seto_. I know that I'm selfish for making my happiness depend on you. And I know that you know it. Is that why you stay with me; to protect me? You shouldn't. You deserve someone who's a far better man than I am. _That in mind, he settled in to try and get a few hours of sleep before he had to get up and endure another chaotic day at Kaiba Corp.

As his arms wrapped themselves around the sleeping redhead he had one final, desperate thought before drifting off to sleep himself: _please don't leave me_.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Seto, though we all love him, is not the kind of person who always makes the morally correct choices; he is in charge of a major company after all, and I think it's important to keep that in mind. Even though he found Gozaburo deplorable, Seto is his disciple and he's oftentimes disrespectful to the people he works with (I cite season 2 and Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie) and generally uncaring about them (after all, he threatened to put a company that actually cared about its employees out of business if they didn't buy it back from him for way more than it was worth). It's the dark side of Seto Kaiba, and not very attractive, but for a relationship to work I think it's important to acknowledge both the heaven and the hell in your partner.


	8. Money over Morality

**Disclaimer: **I think that at this point we all know that I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!, but in case there's still some doubt: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!.

* * *

_"You punch your way through a world of good intentions  
People don't matter, all you want to do is win  
And nothing ever comes too fast for a man of means__"_

_~Big Life, _Pat Benatar

**Chapter 8**

Seto's alarm went off promptly at six-thirty, saving him from unsettling and fragmented dreams. As Seto reached over to turn it off and got out of bed, Alistair groaned and pulled the sheet over his head.

Not too long ago the alarm would have been enough to jar him awake, but a lot had changed in the last year and a half, and while he was still a light sleeper, Seto's blaring alarm no longer put him in an irrational panic, though it often conjured up memories from his past. This day however, he was far too tired to care and merely rolled over and went back to sleep.

After getting dressed, Seto made his way down to the dining room where Trudy had already laid out his breakfast as well as a cup of black coffee and the day's newspaper. Given that Trudy usually waited for him to actually sit down before serving his breakfast, he knew that she wanted to avoid bearing witness to his reaction when he read the paper which meant there had to be something in it he wouldn't like. With that in mind, he sat down to see just what it was. He didn't have to flip too many pages to find out.

For the second day in a row, Kaiba Corp had made the front page: _Feminists Rally Against Kaiba Corp_. Gnashing his teeth, Seto read the story which detailed the overwhelming support the local and online feminist communities were showing for the _Out Loud_ article and their plans to boycott KC.

If anything, this latest episode in the entire infuriating saga pissed him off more than the initial exposé. The girl who'd written that, Britney Whinnery, had at least been doing it to further her career, something he could respect even if he wanted to break her fingers for targeting _him_ in order to do it, but this latest news story was, in his opinion, only giving voice to a bunch of self-righteous harpies who apparently had nothing better to do than complain.

He'd dealt with them once before during the Grand Championship tournament when they'd taken to their blogs to decry the low percentage of female participants. That time he'd declined to comment given that if they'd bothered to look up anything about the tournament at all they would have realized that the competitors were chosen based on their overall international rankings—something he had absolutely no control over. This time though, he knew that he'd have to address them, especially if they decided to actually come out from behind their computers and do something.

As it happened, he didn't have to wait long: on his drive to work, Roland called him to inform him that an angry group of picketers and several media vultures were assembled in front of KC headquarters.

"I'm not talking to them," he said flatly.

"Sir, you're going to have to say _something_."

"Why? If I had something to say I'd call them."

"Because sir, it'll look pretty bad if they get someone else instead of you." Seto had a sudden vision of one of the phone operators or other mini-skirt-wearing employees getting cornered and bullied into making a statement and what a mess _that_ would be to downplay, particularly if said girl said anything unflattering.

"Hmm…Fine, I'll say something. Is everything ready for the meeting today?"

"Yes sir."

"Good. And find someone with a high definition camera; I want some nice pictures to send to the papers of just how diverse Kaiba Corp can be. That being said, I need you to make sure that there's no one at this meeting who shouldn't be."

"Understood."

For the rest of the drive, Seto contemplated what he wanted to say to the media. He knew better than to say what was really on his mind, which left him with one option: kill them with kindness. Needless to say; there was only one part of that that he was looking forward to and it didn't involve being kind.

He met Roland, Saito, and his lawyer Eske Uedo in the corporation's parking structure. Seto locked eyes with his bodyguard who patted the revolver that was strapped to his belt and nodded before turning to Roland.

"Let's get this over with."

The group walked across the ground floor of the skyscraper with Seto in the lead. As they passed rows upon rows of cubicles, everyone ducked for cover, not wanting to be caught staring at the irate CEO. Finally, they reached the building's main entrance. Through the plate glass of the front doors, Seto could see that a small crowd of roughly fifty people holding signs were congregated around the front steps. The entire sorry event was being captured by two camera crews and several reporters. Sighing deeply, he pushed the doors open and stepped outside, Saito, Roland, and Uedo hot on his heels.

The cameras immediately turned to him and two microphones and a recorder were shoved in his face.

"I understand why you're here and why you're upset," he started. "And in fact, I agree that you have every reason to be; the person responsible for implementing such policies in the first place was detestable, but as you can see he's no longer running this company; _I_ am, and since here at Kaiba Corp we specialize in state of the art technology, I believe our policies should reflect that. In fact, today I'm holding a meeting to make sure that my employees have the opportunity to voice their opinions on the subject and help continue to keep Kaiba Corp on the cutting edge. The notes from this meeting will be released to the public so there is no need to worry about our transparency." His statement complete, he turned on his heel to walk back into the building, Roland and Saito blocking the reporters from following him.

* * *

As he'd promised, Alistair filled Mokuba in on what Seto had told him the night before, and the two of them watched the news coverage of the protest in front of Kaiba Corp headquarters, including Seto's speech, on Mokuba's laptop, though according to the comments left under the story, the viewers at least had been far from impressed by what Seto had to say.

Privately, Alistair agreed with them. Seto had made no promises, and Alistair knew with absolute certainty that while notes from the meeting might well be released, they would have been carefully doctored first to make sure they only showed what Seto wanted them to show. Such was the world of business. Transparency indeed.

After breakfast, Alistair excused himself to get ready for work; he was pulling a double shift that day. He pulled a black polo over his head only to realize it was Seto's; Trudy had been sloppy when it came to whose clothes were whose recently. He wouldn't have minded except that the shirt was emblazoned with the KC logo and Seto would kill him for in any way publicly connecting himself to the company. Besides, in light of recent events he didn't much cared to promote Kaiba Corp anyway. He stripped out of the shirt and traded it for a plain white v-neck and faded jeans.

Upon arriving at the library he was greeted by Zoe who for some strange reason that he couldn't fathom had taken to acting as though the two were best friends. She was constantly asking him how she looked and whether he thought that random male patrons were attractive or not.

He managed to shake her off after leaving the staff lounge given that she was in charge of sorting returned material onto their respective carts, and he was slotted to shelve in the young adult section.

Shelving was Alistair's favorite job for two reasons: one, it was relatively mindless which allowed for him to zone out if he wanted to, and two, it was an excellent opportunity to discover new things to read. The Kaiba library was vast, no doubt, but since neither Gozaburo nor Seto was particularly interested in literature the collection hadn't been added to in the last forty odd years, and it was therefore limited.

He decided on this particular day to zone out; he certainly had plenty to think about. Had he been paying more attention, he would have realized that he was being watched.

* * *

Ryou Bakura had first visited the Domino Public Library a month prior simply to get out of the rain. He'd sat in the young adult section while he dried off, not particularly motivated to go back to his small, cramped apartment. That was when he'd first seen the red-headed young man who worked at the library. He knew that most people could probably just walk over and start a conversation, but he wasn't most people.

Ryou was painfully shy at the best of times, but after being controlled by the spirit of the Millennium Ring for so long, he felt like a freak to boot. A freak who, in order to be allowed to go to college, had to see a psychiatrist who was convinced that he'd had a psychotic break.

How could he be expected to explain that to someone else? It's not like he could say that he'd been possessed by a vengeful spirit from ancient Egypt, so he'd be forced to tell them the same thing that Dr. Tendo had force-fed him: the pressures of being a student and the absence of his parents had gotten to him and he'd lost his mind and the only thing stopping it from happening again was the bottle of little white pills he had to carry around with him.

So he hadn't gone up to the young man that day, or any other day, but he did continue to visit the library, hoping that one day, maybe, he'd work up the courage to go and talk to him.

He'd not told anyone about the crush that he had on the DPL employee, not even what could arguably be considered his best friends. But that was just it; they could be _considered_ his best friends only because they had a shared history and were friendly to him, but he'd never really been a part of their group. Not for a lack of trying.

When he'd first moved to Domino, back in high school, they'd welcomed him and invited him to hang out with them several times, but his sickliness at the time (which, it turned out, had been caused by the Millennium Ring) had often forced him to have to bow out of any given activity and so he'd lost his chance.

It had been while following after Yugi, Téa , Tristan, and Joey during the Duelist Kingdom tournament that he'd developed feelings for Joey. He'd been attracted to the sandy-haired duelist's confidence and his loyalty to his friends, but in the end he'd realized that even without the spirit's help, Joey never would have reciprocated his feelings if his on-again off-again flame Mai Valentine was anything to go on.

The thought had certainly crossed his mind that even if he were to actually talk to _him_ there was every chance that _he_ could be straight too, and that would be as disappointing as it would be embarrassing, so he merely watched on from afar with his eyes unfocused and his expression wistful while the young man went about his work and daydreamed about scenarios in which he _had_ been brave enough to talk to him.

Finally, as the summer wore on, he had a legitimate excuse to finally talk to him. Terrified, he walked from the library's main lobby to the young adult section where _he_ was unloading a heavily-laden cart.

* * *

"Excuse me?" a soft British voice inquired from behind him, causing Alistair to turn around, his arms laden with books.

"Yes?" he addressed the young man who had spoken, taking in the fluffy white hair framing an equally pale face whose only splash of color came from a pair of amber eyes. Bakura?

"I'm looking for a few books for a seminar I'm taking." Alistair noticed a small piece of paper clutched in the young man's hand.

"Sure."

"I know this sounds silly to ask since I could probably find them myself, but the woman at the desk said that because they're standard literature course books I should ask to have them reserved, but I don't know how to do that and I'd already walked away by the time I realized so…"

"No problem. Can I see your list?" He set the books he'd been holding back on the cart, still stealing glances at the Brit. It couldn't be Bakura; that's be too weird of a coincidence. And this man wasn't wearing anything that looked like a Millennium Item.

"Oh, yes, of course. Here." He handed Alistair the piece of paper on which he'd written out the names of several novels in lovely script, so unlike the scribbles that Seto produced when he attempted to write anything longhand.

"We definitely have all of these," he answered slowly, "but these are also all books that I'm pretty sure are on this list we have in the back of books that are likely to be put on reserve because they are so standard. But I can check. Can you follow me?" The pale young man nodded.

At one of the library's many computers Alistair pulled each of the books up. As he'd suspected, several of them were already reserved, including all eight of the library's copies of _Dracula_.

"_Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ we have, and _Dorian Gray_ is due back in three days so I can reserve that for you, but the others are all either reserved or out and not due back for several weeks, although I can put you down on the waiting lists, but I don't know what place you'd be. I'm sorry." The man's face fell.

"Oh…"

"It might not be what you want to hear, but you could find them online as free PDFs or buy them cheaply if you check local thrift stores or even online stores." The young man nodded, still looking slightly crestfallen, reaching to take his list back from Alistair. Before he quite knew what he was saying, Alistair had already started talking:

"I have a couple of these myself. You can borrow them if you want." The man's brown eyes widened.

"No, I couldn't possibly…"

"It's fine, really. Can I see that paper again?" He took the paper back and scanned the list a second time before taking one of the stubby pencils out of a container next to the computer as well as a piece of scrap paper that patrons could use to write down call numbers and wrote out his cell phone number. "If you call me tomorrow I can let you know for sure about everything else on this list, but I know for sure that I have _Black Beauty_, _Treasure Island_, and _Dracula_."

"Thank you so much uh…"

"Oh, sorry. Alistair. Alistair Ravensdale."

"I'm Ryou Bakura." It _was_ him! Alistair, try as he might not to, must have looked surprised because Ryou added: "do we know each other?" He sounded nervous. There were large chunks of time during which the evil spirit had been in charge where his memory was splintered and hazy. He hoped he hadn't wronged Alistair in some way.

"No, but…" Alistair decided to just come right out and ask. "You don't by any chance happen to own the Millennium Ring, do you?" Ryou bit his lip. The spirit _had_ done something to this man.

"Not anymore," he said softly, staring at the ground. "It's gone. For good. I'm so sorry for whatever the dark spirit did to you."

"Oh, no, no, nothing. Don't apologize, I was just surprised when I realized why I recognized you."

"How do you know about the Millennium Items?" Over Bakura's shoulder, Alistair saw his boss, Mr. Himeno, shoot him a disapproving look and shake his head.

"I have to get back to work," he said apologetically. "I'll explain later."

"Sorry, I hope I didn't get you into any trouble," Ryou apologized quickly. "Thank you for your help and for offering to loan me the books; that's really nice of you. Um…I guess I'll talk to you tomorrow." With an awkward wave and Alistair's phone number clutched in his hand, he hurried from the main room and back into the lobby.

For the rest of his first shift, Alistair pondered the encounter. Clearly there was more to the 'what happened in Egypt' story than Seto had told him if Bakura didn't have the Millennium Ring anymore. And what on earth had possessed him to offer to loan him those books? Seto would not be happy if he found out that Alistair was doing a favor for someone who had once kidnapped Mokuba, but then again that hadn't been Bakura's fault, not if the spirit of the ring had been possessing him at the time.

Why was it that he never seemed to be able to get involved with normal people? First Dartz, then Seto, now Bakura, who was next, Yugi Mouto?

* * *

Despite the fact that the meeting had been tiresome and for the most part staged given that he knew perfectly well that no one would actually have the nerve to agree with the Whinnery girl's article if they wanted to keep their jobs, Seto came out of it feeling much better about the whole situation.

He had essentially promised to get the uniform policy changed so that there was a choice between the revealing outfits and something more conservative and had agreed to begin writing up something that would protect employees from being fired based on race or sexual orientation. Someone from the PR department had captured the entire event on camera and sent the pictures and write-up to the local papers as well as to _Out Loud,_ and posted them on KC's website. To top it off, Britney Whinnery had agreed to the meeting he'd requested provided he allow her to bring someone with her, which he'd agreed to, figuring she probably had a friend who was studying law who thought he was hotshot enough to 'represent' her or something else immature and nonsensical like that.

As he drove back to the mansion he was in higher spirits than he had been in weeks. Winning always had that effect on him.

The day had gone so smoothly that he got home before Alistair and went up to Mokuba's room to fill him in.

Mokuba was relieved to hear that his brother considered the matter all but resolved.

"You seem surprised," Seto said suspiciously.

"Only because Alistair made it sound like it was a huge problem."

"What do you mean? What did he tell you?" Mokuba relayed the version of events he'd gotten from Alistair that morning. Seto was deeply annoyed that Alistair had presented such a doom and gloom account of the scandal, particularly to Mokuba who was susceptible to worrying about such things.

"You and I have nothing to worry about," Seto said confidently once the teen had finished talking. "I'm going to show this girl why trying to ruin my company's reputation was a bad idea! Once I do that it'll show Siegfried once and for all that I'm the superior businessman!"

"I guess. But Seto." Mokuba hesitated before continuing. "Don't you think that the girl who wrote that article kind of has a point? I mean, I never really thought about the fact that the uniforms are a little skimpy, but now that she's pointing it out, don't you think that's kind of bad? Or the fact that we don't have a very diverse group of employees?" Seto crossed his arms.

"Objectively, I agree that that's a bit old-fashioned. But so what? It wasn't affecting productivity. And no one ever complained about the uniforms or any of it until this Whinnery woman brought it up which makes me want to kick her teeth in. I'll fix it, but it would have been more convenient if I didn't have to." Mokuba felt that his brother's answer left a lot to be desired, but knew that Seto was unlikely to change his stance no matter what. He therefore decided to tackle a different issue.

"Um…Seto, can I ask you about something else?"

"What is it?" Seto's voice was wary.

"It's about the other day…"

"Oh, that. Mokuba." The teen hesitantly met his brother's gaze. "I promise that that will never happen again. Now drop it."

"Do you and he usually get drunk like that?"

"No. I would never do that to you." He was referring to the fact that it was because of a drunk driver plowing into their father's car that they were orphans. "It was a onetime thing and it was stupid."

"Was it your idea, or his?"

"Does it matter?" Seto shot back dismissively. "Anyway, we have more important things to deal with right now and I need you to focus." Mokuba nodded.

"What do you need me to do?"

"It'll be easier for you to win the public over than me at this point, so if it comes down to a game of good cop, bad cop, I need you to play the good cop."

"You want _me_ to talk to the papers?"

"I might need you to depending on how well things go at the press conference next week. If everything goes according to plan that should be the end of it, but if not I need you to be prepared to become the face of Kaiba Corp." The teen's eyes widened.

"The face of Kaiba Corp? I can't do that; I'm just a kid; no one would take me seriously as a spokesperson!"

"You forget who you're talking to. I'd already been in charge of the company for two years by the time I was your age and you best believe people took _me_ seriously."

"Yeah, but I'm not you."

"You were the MC at the Grand Championship tournament and the main referee for Battle City; you have more authority than you think you do." Mokuba continued to look skeptical. He was fairly certain that any authority he appeared to have came as a direct result of the fact that people knew who his older brother was. "However," Seto continued, "if you aren't interested in making the commitment that's another story. If you aren't willing to dedicate yourself to Kaiba Corp then now would be the time to tell me so that I can try and find someone else." Mokuba stared at his brother incredulously.

"How can you even say that?" It was Seto's turn to be surprised. "We're a team! There's nothing I'd rather do than work alongside you! I still think you're crazy for considering having me take over from you as spokesperson for the entire company, but if that ends up being what you want then I'll do it! But wait." His confident expression slipped slightly. "If I would have said no, would you have asked Alistair?"

"Of course not. He has no interest in being a part of Kaiba Corp. You're not telling me you're still jealous of him, are you?"

"No. But I know that he's one of the only people you trust."

"So?"

"Nothing. That's just why I asked. Who _would_ you have asked then?" Seto considered the matter.

"Roland would be the most obvious option, but a woman would probably ultimately be a better move, or at least the most politically correct, and given that we have extremely close ties with the dueling community I would have started by soliciting the top-ranked female duelists."

"Wouldn't it make the most sense to do that anyway?"

"Please. I don't want to have to associate with the likes of Rebecca Hawkins, Vivian Wong, or Mai Valentine unless I absolutely have to. Can you even imagine having to interact with one of them on a daily basis?" Privately, Mokuba wouldn't have minded, particularly if his brother had teamed up with Mai, but he didn't dare say so lest he be forced to explain why.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Seto Kaiba is in charge of a major corporation, and more importantly, he's a pretty ruthless businessman as evidenced by pretty much every scene dealing with KC. His morals are also a little screwy, so of course he's not going to give a damn about his employees happiness as such, as long as they work hard. And he would be nothing but annoyed by all of the social justice warriors supporting the magazine articles claim-even if they have every reason to be upset.

I feel like every story is allowed one or two big coincidences. Ryou having a crush on Alistair is one of the ones I've allowed myself. But it fits into the plot, I promise.


	9. Check Your Privilege

**Disclaimer: **If it is truly still necessary, I shall admit for the 42nd time that I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh!

* * *

_"The more privilege you have the more oblivious you become to it."_

_~Tim Winton _

**Chapter 9**

By the time Alistair arrived at the estate he'd decided against mentioning his unexpected encounter with Bakura; there was no need to bring down Seto's wrath upon him now that the spirit of the Ring was gone.

He joined the Kaiba brothers at the dining room table just as Trudy was ladling out steaming bowls of stew.

"I know it's a bit out of season," she said. "But I found this recipe online and I couldn't wait until winter to try it out!"

"No complaints here," Mokuba said, licking his lips. Trudy smiled and turned to Alistair.

"I already fed Sewell, so there's no need to worry about her."

"Oh, thank you." In truth, the fact that he'd have to feed the calico had completely slipped his mind.

"How did your meeting go today?" the older woman asked Seto, who hadn't yet said anything, tentatively. Seto shrugged.

"As well as I expected."

"I'm glad. It's not as though any of this is _your_ fault after all. I hardly think _you_ were the one who wanted those women dressed like that."

"Of course not." She took that as her cue to go. She told them to enjoy the meal and retreated back to the kitchen.

"What's your next move?" Alistair asked curiously. Seto was being awfully quiet and the lack of gloating was leading the redhead to believe something was up.

"I'm meeting with Britney Whinnery and one of her loser friends on Monday to discuss the press-conference. That means that we'll have to postpone our duel; I'll need this weekend to prepare."

Halfway through the meal Alistair had a sudden realization that almost caused him to choke on a mouthful of potato. Britney Whinnery was _Darren's_ roommate which meant that Darren could possibly be the friend that she was planning on bringing with her to her meeting with Seto. Darren had promised not to reveal what he knew of Alistair and Seto's relationship, but that had been some time ago.

He knew he should probably warn Seto so that the brunette wouldn't be blindsided if Darren chose to threaten him with that, but he was afraid that if he did, Seto would never forgive him for having revealed the information to Darren in the first place. _Besides_, he reasoned, _there's no real reason to think that she will bring Darren._ _But then again, even if she doesn't, he could have told her…But maybe he didn't…Surely if she knew that she would have brought it up already..._

Ultimately he decided to give Darren a call the moment he was alone to implore the former art student not to use the information against Seto in their meeting.

Seto was far too busy with his own issues to notice the change in Alistair's demeanor and Mokuba was distracted by his food and his cell phone, so he too noticed nothing.

* * *

As soon as he was done eating, Alistair excused himself and feigned having to make a phone call to a colleague to ask about the weekend's schedule. The moment he was alone he whipped out his cell phone and dialed Darren's number, but unfortunately, as an automated message informed him, Darren appeared to have changed it since the last time Alistair had talked to him. Cursing under his breath, he called Moira, but she didn't have his number either.

"Just call the library in the morning." Alistair jumped and looked up. Seto was leaning nonchalantly against the wall of the foyer. "I need to blow off some steam; care to spar?" Alistair bit his lip and glanced back at his phone, but there really wasn't anything more he could do except drive over to the apartment and pray that either Darren or Britney still lived there, but there was no way he could get away with doing that until the next day without raising suspicion.

"Um…fine. Ok."

"Afraid you're going to lose?" Seto taunted. Trying to tune back into the present, Alistair narrowed his eyes.

"You wish."

As he parried one of Alistair's kicks thirty minutes later, Seto congratulated himself on his decision to teach the redhead how to fight so that he had a real opponent to spar against as opposed to the mechanical dummy he'd been stuck with before. Alistair had been a quick learner and had easily picked up on what Seto taught him, but of course Seto had saved the best moves for himself.

He ended the match by twisting Alistair's arm behind his back and forcing him to his knees on the mat.

"Do you feel better now?" Alistair asked sourly as he stood up, breathing hard from the exertion. Seto smirked.

"Much."

"You know, eventually I'm going to get good enough to beat you whether you teach me better moves willingly or not."

"Heh. We'll see. Sauna?" Alistair nodded, and the two walked across the Kaiba's private gym to the sauna located in a walled-off alcove on the far side, stripping out of their sweaty muscle shirts as they went.

Upon sitting in the steamy sauna, Seto immediately rested his back against the warm wood of the bench and closed his eyes, his face adopting a contented expression, but Alistair was a bit more restless. He was still unaccustomed to the concept of a sauna.

"_Wouldn't a hot shower be better?"_ he'd asked the first time. _"Then you'd be getting clean at the same time as being warm."_

"Stop fidgeting," Seto murmured, cracking one eye open. "You're worse than Mokuba." Chagrined, Alistair attempted to sit back and relax, but it went against his very nature to sit still for too long; he needed to be moving or at least doing _something_.

After ten minutes of trying to achieve the fugue state that Seto seemed to be in, he gave up and rested his head on the brunette's sweat-slicked shoulder. Again, Seto cracked one eye open.

"Seriously?"

"I'm bored." Seto let out a long-suffering sigh.

"I'm never inviting you to do this ever again." He stood up as best he could in the low-ceilinged room and made for the door. "Come on." Happy to be relieved of his boredom Alistair followed, though he knew that the most unpleasant part of the sauna experience was yet to come.

The next room over contained a shower spigot that only produced cold water. Seto claimed that dousing oneself in icy water immediately after leaving the sauna was healthy, but Alistair had his doubts.

"Your turn," Seto said, shivering as he emerged from under the frigid spray. Alistair reluctantly took his turn, shuddering as the cold water made contact with his heated skin.

"Too cold for you?" Seto asked with a challenging look in his eye.

"Not at all," Alistair lied with a dainty sniff. "Besides, like you said: it's good for you." Seto didn't believe him for a moment, but chose not to call him out on it.

Once they were dressed and making their way upstairs to shower, Seto acted on a sudden impulse and stopped, putting his hands on the shorter man's shoulders and bending down to kiss him.

"What was that for?" Alistair asked. Seto shrugged.

"I felt like it."

"Careful Seto: affection is a slippery slope; next thing you know you'll be telling me you love me." Seto quickly recovered from his surprise at the redhead's snarky tone.

"I'm willing to risk it."

* * *

After showering, the two split up. Seto went down to his home office to begin researching the feminist movement so that he'd be prepared to sound educated should Britney Whinnery try to bring up something she assumed he knew nothing about, and Alistair went to his room to play with Sewell and take a few practice math tests in preparation for the calculus class he had to take once he started at the university.

"Hey you," Alistair said when the little calico rushed over to him the moment he opened the door. He picked up the purring animal and cuddled her against his chest. She meowed and rubbed her head against the underside of his chin. "Did you miss me?" She meowed again in response.

For the next fifteen minutes, Alistair amused himself by watching Sewell chase the red dot from a KC logo embossed laser pointer he'd appropriated from Seto's office the last time he'd been there, then decided it was time to get down to work.

While an exhausted Sewell curled up on the bed for a nap, Alistair sat at his desk and cracked open the calculus book he'd found in the Kaiba library.

When he'd first mentioned struggling with the subject due to the fact that the highest level of formal math he'd ever taken was pre-algebra, Seto had offered to help him. It quickly became apparent however that Seto was a horrible teacher. He got more frustrated than Alistair when the redhead didn't understand something, saying that it was just 'obvious' and that Alistair was obtuse if he didn't get it.

Needless to say, the 'lesson' ended with a yelling match during which Alistair threw the graphing calculator Seto was shoving in his face across the room where it broke against the wall. After that disaster, Alistair had taken to sitting in on Mokuba's math lessons, which he had twice a week, and catching up that way, although he had to do most of the work on his own.

Half the battle turned out to be learning how to use the calculator he needed to solve the problems. After breaking the one Seto had given him, he'd had to borrow one of Mokuba's which was slightly older and even more finicky. Still, he'd stuck it out and was finally starting to grasp what the formerly mysterious strings of numbers and symbols were asking of him.

When he'd gone to the Domino University open house with Moira he'd talked to the head of the mathematics department, expressing his concerns that his math skills weren't up to par, to which the man had replied that one of the key tricks to being a good math student was to think of each problem like a puzzle. "_The answer is always right there,_" he'd explained, "_you just need to know the trick to unlocking it and the rest happens naturally._" He'd also offered Alistair a pamphlet with websites that offered free practice tests and had underlined the three he personally found the best because they offered step by step explanations.

Given that Alistair was already a skilled hacker who was familiar with several computer codes, he found, upon taking the professor's advice and thinking of the problems like code instead of numbers, that much of calculus was quite logical.

He worked feverishly on the practice tests until the numbers started blurring together. He glanced at the computer's digital clock display and started. Surely it couldn't be three in the morning already. Why hadn't Seto come to get him? Unless the brunette was still down in his office…

Yawning, he shut the computer down, turned the lights off, leaving Sewell snoozing on a pillow, and padded downstairs to drag Seto to bed.

Seto, who had been reading and watching documentaries for the past six hours, was tired beyond belief and his fingers were starting to cramp from having taken so many notes. Who could have known that there was more to feminism than soccer moms with first world problems?

"You look like you're about to fall asleep on top of your keyboard," Alistair observed, the sudden noise causing Seto to jump.

"Stop doing that!" he snapped. The redhead had the uncanny ability to seemingly appear out of thin air.

"Sorry; I wasn't trying to sneak up on you," Alistair apologized sincerely.

"Just learn how to make audible footsteps! Anyway, what do you want? I'm in the middle of watching," he glanced at the name of the documentary, "_Virgins Until Marriage_." Alistair snorted.

"It's a bit late for that don't you think?"

"Shut up. It's part of this documentary series about the history of feminism." He yawned suddenly, his jaw popping audibly. "I've been trying to get a handle on the subject in case it comes up on Monday."

"Have you learned anything interesting?" Alistair asked, lounging on the leather couch situated along the right wall.

"Oh sure; I've learned all about the atrocities that women have faced in this country and around the world for hundreds of years and why all men should just roll over and give up any and all power in an attempt to make up for it."

"You don't sound convinced."

"I'm not; it's stupid."

"So you think women should still be second class citizens?"

"You're doing that thing where you try to make me sound like a heartless asshole."

"You do a fine job of that all on your own."

"No, I don't think that women should be second to men. I agree that that's ridiculous. Of course women should be able to wear whatever they want and have whatever jobs they want, and have the right to vote and whatever else. And I don't think that they should be forced to stay at home and make sandwiches for their husbands either. The fact that that's even a debate is absurd. What I _don't_ agree with is some of this nit-picky bullshit that people like Britney Whinnery spew like the concept that if a man doesn't bow down at the feet of the modern feminists he's misogynistic and deserves to be castrated." Alistair winced.

"I'm sure no one really thinks that." Seto gestured dramatically towards his computer screen.

"People _do_; I've just spent at least three of the six hours I've been here reading the blogs of people who not only believe that, but try to convince other people that they should too." He clicked back through several tabs. "'Any woman who is not a misandrist is just not aware of the world,'" he quoted. "'If you believe that race/gender/weight doesn't factor into _every single_ one of your daily experiences, then you are either an oppressor or unaware of your oppression. Either way, you're wrong. We live in a racist/sexist/transphobic/fatphobic society and literally every interaction you have with another gender/race/size is wrought with oppression and privilege.'"

"What's misandry?"

"The hatred of men." Alistair was silent for several minutes.

"I understand," he said finally. "I don't agree, but I understand. When I worked for Dartz, I saw the world that way too. I don't know what it's like to be a woman or a person of color or fat, but I do know what it's like to be one of the have nots and have the obscenities of the wealthy rubbed in my face, or at least, that's what I was convinced was happening. Now I'm not saying that I suddenly don't think that classism is a problem, but I've come to realize that it's not everywhere like I thought it was.

I was _sure_ that every single rich person looked down on poor people and went out of their way to distance themselves from them and screw them over, but honestly, I think that mostly rich people just don't know anything about it. They hear about poverty on the news, but they don't see it for themselves and they probably don't know any poor people. You're a really good example of that actually.

For these women it's probably the same. Sexism _does_ exist, and no offence, but that KC uniform policy proves that, but again, it's a matter of perspective. These people who are going after you about it are acting based on the assumption that you personally chose those uniforms because you think of women as sex objects which _would_ make you sexist if that were true. But what they don't know/want to believe, is that _you_ didn't implement that; Gozaburo did. _You_ didn't even notice what they were wearing until this whole thing started which just goes to show how much you _don't _over-sexualize women's bodies . Well, and how uninterested in women you are." Seto shot him a look over the top of his PC.

"Look: I appreciate you trying to break this down for me, but—and you can say I'm just basking in my white, rich, male privilege or whatever the hell you want to call it—I don't give a damn." Alistair could see that Seto was in no mood to be convinced and shelved the matter, mostly because he could see that the two of them were not going to agree. But just before he completely let it drop, he offered up one final thought.

"You may not give a damn now, but you might if it comes to effect _you_." Seto narrowed his eyes.

"Why would it?"

"You might have white, rich, and male privilege, but you struck out when it came to straight privilege."

"Not really," Seto argued. "I already have a job, so it's not like I need to be hired, no one would dare try to tangle with me over something as irrelevant as who I'm sleeping with even though Roland seems to think so, and I don't have any intention of having kids so what do I care what the law says about _that_?"

"Are you honestly going to ignore the most obvious one?" Alistair asked incredulously.

"What?"

"You can't get married."

"Oh, that. So? What do I care?" Alistair, overtired and exasperated, started to laugh. "What's so funny?"

"You. You're so thickheaded sometimes."

"Enlighten me." The lateness of the hour was causing Seto's temper to be even shorter than usual.

"Let's pretend for a second that you, at some distant and hypothetical point in the future, were with someone, but you weren't married. Now say that you had to go to the hospital unexpectedly because you, I don't know, hit your head or something and fell into a coma. They would have no legal right to make any kind of call about what happens to you even if you've been together for thirty years. Or say you die; they could be completely screwed out of any kind of inheritance. Insurance is an issue, taxes, all kinds of things."

"Why do you know all of that?"

"Because I happen to have a vested interest in knowing what kinds of rights I do and don't have."

"Did you honestly think your feeble attempt not to name names was lost on me? You're talking about yourself. _You_ would get screwed out of an inheritance if I died. _You_ wouldn't get to make any kind of call if I hit my head."

"I am _not_ talking about me! I was being hypothetical!"

"Bull. You _were_ talking about yourself. Is this your very indirect way of proposing?" Seto's evident amusement got under Alistair's skin even as he felt his cheeks burning.

"Don't be stupid! Who could possibly endure you long enough to marry you?"

"Not you I take it." The statement was Seto's way of fishing for an actual answer and Alistair knew it. But he also knew that no matter what he said the brunette would make fun of him for it.

"Just go back to your computer. I'm going to bed." He made to leave.

"Hang on. I'll be done in a few minutes."

"Fine." He sat back down and crossed his arms.

It wasn't just a few minutes as it turned out, and despite his best efforts to stay awake, after a quarter of an hour Alistair ended up falling asleep with his head resting on the arm of the couch.

"Alright, I'm done," Seto proclaimed a half an hour later, glancing over as his PC powered down and noticing for the first time that Alistair was no longer awake. "Alistair," he said sharply. "Wake up." Alistair crinkled his eyebrows.

"Wha?" he asked blearily.

"Get up; let's go to bed."

"Finally."

"At least I don't have to carry you this time," Seto said as he turned the light off in his office.

"You say that as though you have to do it so often. You've carried me _once_."

"Twice," Seto corrected him absently, mentally checking to see if he'd forgotten anything. The computer was off, his alarm had been set…

"Twice? What was the other time?" Alistair asked, confused. Seto looked over at him.

"I carried you off the plane after you passed out."

"You never told me that."

"It never came up."

"Why? Roland or someone else could have done that."

"I don't know Alistair; it was a spur of the moment decision." He thought back to that day when Alistair continued to look inquiring. "I went back for Mokuba after I crash-landed the plane and he was sitting next to you on the ground. After I made sure he was ok, I started to call Roland to send someone to get you, but then I decided not to. Not only would it have wasted unnecessary time since I was already right there, I felt like it would have been an insult not to carry you myself. Besides, the plane could have caught on fire or something and your death would have been my fault. I didn't want that on my conscience."

"What happened after that?" Alistair asked, fascinated by the story.

"Nothing. I grabbed you and Mokuba and I got out of the wreck only to run straight into Yugi and the dweeb team. Then I carried you onto one of the choppers and lay you out on a cot." He didn't mention it, but he'd also removed the duelist's jacket to use in lieu of a blanket.

"I can't believe after everything I did to you and Mokuba that you did that for me," Alistair said softly. "Why did you do it? Why did you take me in?" He'd asked the question before, but never gotten a satisfying or complete answer.

"It was Mokuba's idea. I would have been fine with just dropping you at a hospital and footing the bill and have considered that more than having fulfilled my civic duty, but he felt bad for you and pointed out that you'd probably have nowhere to go once you woke up.

At first I was just thinking that I'd rent you an apartment, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to prove to you that I wasn't like my step-father. I don't know why I cared so much since most people probably think that about me, but in the end I cared enough that I decided I'd rather put you up here so that I could prove it to you."

"Well, you succeeded; I don't think that anymore. I know that you aren't evil like he was."

"I could say the same about you. You aren't the whiny, delusional loony I thought you were either."

"I guess it just goes to show that you can't judge a book by its cover, huh?" Seto rolled his eyes.

"You're using clichés; now I _know_ it's time to go to sleep."

* * *

As they got into bed Alistair felt unsettled. He needed to get in touch with Darren to implore him not to tell Britney what he knew, or to convince her not to tell Seto about it if he'd already told her. If Seto found out that Alistair had told someone about them (even though it hadn't been intentional) he would no doubt feel betrayed, and given the brunette's history of depression and cutting, Alistair was concerned about what that kind of betrayal would do to him.

He rolled over and propped himself up on his elbow. Maybe if he told Seto now he could explain in such a way as to make him understand that he hadn't told Darren on purpose. Seto would be angry, but then at least he would know.

"What is it?" Seto asked sleepily. Alistair suddenly changed his mind. He still had two days to find Darren. If, by Sunday night, he hadn't managed to either contact him or convince him, _then_ he'd tell Seto about it.

"Nothing." He reached out and stroked the side of the CEO's face. "I love you." Seto crinkled his eyebrows, sensing that that hadn't been what Alistair had been going to say. Then again, perhaps he was reading too much into it; Alistair _did_ have a habit of saying that at seemingly random moments.

"You're such a sap," he replied, though he was half-smiling, and leaned up enough that he could press his lips lightly against Alistair's. Alistair lay down beside him, and Seto put his arm around him, marveling at how natural that felt. Not too long ago he had avoided touch as much as possible, not trusting anyone enough to let them get that close, but now here he was, lying with Alistair so near that he could feel the heat emanating from him. He hoped it would always be that way.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Sort of my own little disclaimer here: I don't personally feel that way about modern feminism, but I know plenty of people who do and it seemed like the most natural and in-character way for Seto to feel about it. Again, it's a money over morality thing.


	10. Trouble in Paradise

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! I know it's difficult to come to terms with, but it's the truth.

* * *

_"Any minute now, my ship is coming in _  
_I'll keep checking the horizon _  
_And I'll check my machine, there's sure to be that call _  
_It's gonna happen soon, soon, oh so very soon."_

_Waiting for My Real Life to Begin~ _Colin Hay

**Chapter 10**

Alistair awoke the next morning to the sound of his cell phone ringing. Drowsy and still half-asleep, he got out of bed, amazed that the sound hadn't woken Seto up, and retrieved the phone from his pants pocket, wondering who on earth could be calling him.

It had taken Ryou the better part of the morning to work up the courage to dial Alistair's number, and another ten minutes to finally press send. He felt that it was horribly awkward to borrow something from someone he'd only just met, but since Alistair had offered and he really couldn't afford to say no for nothing more than politeness's sake, he had no choice but to take him up on it. And it was as good a reason as any to see him again.

As the phone started to ring, however, he contemplated hanging up, terrified that Alistair would answer, but at the same time wanting him to.

"Hello?" Alistair asked, his voice husky. He sounded like he'd just woken up.

"Hi, um, I hope I didn't wake you up," Ryou started even though it was almost noon. "It's Ryou Bakura, from yesterday. You told me to call you." Truth be told, that had been the last thing on Alistair's mind and he'd completely forgotten to even check for the books he'd promised to bring.

"Right, hi." He cleared his throat. "It's fine, I should be waking up anyway." Out of the corner of his eye he saw Seto starting to stir and decided to take the conversation elsewhere. Seto looked at him questioningly. "Hang on one second." Alistair pressed the speaker against his chest. "It's this girl, Zoe, from work," he lied. "She needs me to take her shift."

"Tell her not to call so early in the morning next time," Seto grumbled, yawning and preparing to get out of bed. Putting the phone back to his ear, Alistair walked into the hallway.

"Sorry about that," Alistair apologized once he'd closed the door behind him.

"Is this a bad time?" Ryou asked cautiously.

"No, I just had to deal with something."

"I was just wondering if you were still willing to loan me those books. You don't have to of course, but…"

"No, it's fine. Um…" He needed this day to track down Darren, but he had promised Ryou the books and in the end he decided that he could kill two birds with one stone if he brought the books to Ryou on the way to Darren's. "Do you have time for me to drop them off today?" he asked finally.

"Yes," Ryou answered quickly.

"What time?"

"Any time; I don't have any plans. What time is best for you?" Alistair didn't even know what time it was but he guessed that it was roughly twelve.

"What about one-thirty?" he suggested.

"That's fine. Oh, but you need my address. Or we could meet at a coffee shop or something," he added quickly. Alistair saw the opportunity to get himself closer to where he ultimately needed to be and took it.

"I actually need to go to this diner downtown, _Twist_, do you know it?"

"I think I've heard of it. Where is it exactly?" Alistair described the area. It was actually quite far from where Ryou lived, but he wasn't about to say so. "Oh, that's not too far, that's fine. So I'll see you at one-thirty?"

"Yeah, see you then. Bye."

"Who was that?" Alistair jumped visibly. "Sorry," Mokuba, who had been on his way to see if the two were up despite not being allowed in the hallway, apologized, trying not to stare at Alistair, who was only wearing his underwear.

"Oh, I…I was just talking to my coworker, Zoe."

"Why are you meeting her at a diner?" Mokuba. Alistair, who had no idea why Mokuba was so interested, or why he sounded so suspicious, or even why he was there at all, thought fast.

"I told her I'd lend her a couple of books for a class she's taking; all of the copies at the library are out right now, and since the diner's right on my way to work I offered to meet her there to drop them off."

"Oh. Anyway, is Seto up yet? HQ called to see if he's coming in today."

"I think he's in the shower, but I'll give him the message," Alistair promised.

"Ok, thanks." There was an awkward pause in which Alistair realized that he was standing in the hallway in his boxer-briefs, and suddenly self-conscious, he slipped back into the bedroom.

Mokuba walked back to his room, wrinkling his nose slightly at the thought of Alistair and Seto in the shower together. He wasn't sure why exactly it was that beyond his jealousy, Seto and Alistair's relationship made him so uncomfortable seeing as how they were so utterly tight-lipped about it, but it did. He finally decided that a large part of it had to do with the fact that they _were_ so secretive; it left plenty of room for his overactive imagination to fill in the blanks and he often didn't care for what he was able to come up with, especially now that he had real visuals from the night they'd fallen down the stairs.

* * *

Alistair relayed Mokuba's message to Seto, who ultimately decided that he'd work from home that day, not feeling motivated enough to make the drive into Domino seeing as how he would just end up doing there what he could do just as well from his home office.

Trudy was annoyed about Seto and Alistair sleeping so late and missing breakfast, which Alistair apologized for, explaining that it hadn't been on purpose. Given that she hadn't been _so_ vexed, even commenting about how unusual it was for Seto to get a decent about of sleep, she quickly let the matter drop.

He told her he wasn't sure what Seto's plans were, but that _he_ was planning on meeting a coworker for lunch and he wasn't sure if he'd be back for dinner.

"I'll leave a plate for you in the fridge," she said as he was on his way out the dining room to grab the books that Ryou needed from the library and his room. He thanked her over his shoulder.

To his immense relief he was able to find all five books on Ryou's list, including the Kaiba's copy of _Black Beauty_.

He bumped into Seto on his way down to the garage.

"I thought you were taking a shift at the library today," Seto commented.

"I am, I'm just bringing these books to a friend of mine on the way there who needs them for a literature class at the university," he added.

"What friend?" Seto asked, trying not to sound accusatory.

"Moira," Alistair lied. "She's the one I went to the department fair at the university with."

"Oh." Seto relaxed. Alistair hanging out with some girl was hardly anything to get jealous over.

"Anyway, I'd better get going or I'll be late." He edged past Seto and continued on to get his motorcycle.

* * *

Ryou had left for the diner an hour before he was supposed to meet Alistair there to give himself enough time in case he got lost. He ended up arriving twenty minutes early and ordered a soda while he waited. He'd never been to _Twist_ before, but as soon as he saw it he knew exactly what kind of clientele it catered to and was happy to know that his thoughts that Alistair might be gay hadn't been merely wishful thinking.

"Are you waiting for someone, Sugar?" the drag queen waitress asked him as she handed him the glass of soda. He nodded. "Who is it? Maybe I know them."

"His name's Alistair," Ryou replied.

"Red hair, skinny, nice ass? I know him. He used to come here all the time. I haven't seen him in a while though." She looked Ryou over for a second time, taking in his delicate features and big brown eyes, and decided to give him a heads up. "Just so you know, when he did come here, he rarely left by himself if you know what I mean, and never with the same guy twice."

"Hey Crystal: do you think you could stop chatting him up and serve some of the other people in here?" a disgruntled-looking older man asked irritably. She looked up and raised a heavily made-up eyebrow and put a hand on her hip.

"I know you're not talking to _me_ like that," she snapped. "Anyway, you have enough meat on your bones to tide you over until I'm good and ready to take your order." Ryou was shocked by the statement, and was quite sure that the man would at the very least get up and leave, but he merely rolled his eyes and returned to checking his cell phone. Crystal noticed the startled look on his face. "I tell it like it is," she explained. "Oh, it looks like your date is here; I'll just leave you two alone, shall I?"

"Hey," Alistair said, taking a seat across from Ryou in the classic cherry-colored booth. He set the books on the table.

"Hi," Ryou greeted him, trying not to sound overly eager. "Thank you so much for loaning me these."

"No problem," Alistair replied. "Books can be expensive. What class do you need them for anyway?"

"British Literature. It's a one week long block seminar. It meets from ten until six for a week and at the end there's a take home exam."

"That sounds really intense." Ryou nodded.

"It probably will be. It wasn't my first choice, but I needed another class and since I registered late there weren't a lot of options."

"Who's the professor? I'm going to be taking a British literature class too."

"Um…I think his name is Bradbury."

"Oh, it's not the same professor then."

"What's your major?" Ryou asked to keep the conversation going.

"I don't know yet. This will be my first semester. What's yours?"

"I don't have one yet either; this will be my first semester too. I have no idea what I want a degree in yet, do you?"

"I'm thinking about diplomacy."

"That's really interesting. What would you want to do with it?"

"Well, I want to help people, maybe even the people from my homeland." Ryou didn't need to ask where that was.

"That's quite noble of you."

"Or just naïve." Crystal came back over to take Alistair's order.

"I'll just have whatever the special is," he said, adding to Ryou, "if you don't mind me eating in front of you."

"Oh no, of course not."

"Oh, hey, Crystal, can I ask you something?" Alistair asked suddenly. Crystal pouted.

"You disappear off the face of the earth, you don't visit, you don't call, and now you want to ask me something?"

"Uh…"

"I'm just yanking your chain," she laughed. "What is it?"

"Does Darren still come here?" Crystal raised an eyebrow.

"Can I borrow him for a second?" she asked Ryou, who could only nod. "Walk with me," she instructed a confused Alistair. He followed her to the far side of the diner and she suddenly rounded on him. "How can you start asking about other men in the middle of a date?" she demanded. "That sweet boy over there is head over heels for you and you have the nerve to start asking about _Darren_?"

"He and I aren't here on a date," he explained hastily. "I'm just loaning him some books."

"Well you better tell him that." Before he could reply she continued. "As for Darren, yeah, he still drags his ass in here sometimes. I haven't seen him in a few weeks though. You're not chasing after _him_, are you? You could do way better."

"No I am not 'chasing after' him; I just need to talk to him."

"Why, did he knock you up?"

"Of course not, I just need to tell him something." Crystal suddenly turned serious.

"You're not positive, are you?"

"Positive?" He'd heard the expression thrown around before, but he'd never understood what it meant, just that it was bad.

"HIV positive."

"No," he said. "It's nothing like that. But it's personal. Look: if he comes in today or tomorrow can you tell him to call me? Tell him I have the same number."

"Alright, I will." Suddenly the mischievous expression crept back into her eyes. "Now go back to your not date or I might just put him in my pocket and take him home with me."

"Sorry about that," he apologized to Ryou after he'd sat back down.

"It's fine. Um, Alistair, can I ask you something?" Alistair suddenly found himself wondering if what Crystal had said about Ryou thinking this was a date was true.

"Uh, sure."

"How do you know about the Millennium Items if that's not too intrusive to ask?" Alistair, who had been prepared for a much more uncomfortable question breathed a mental sigh of relief.

"Oh, that. I worked for an organization called Doma for a guy called Dartz who was, I guess you could say a ghost of the last king of Atlantis, and he knew about them and because some of my colleagues and I were supposed to target Yugi Motou who of course has, had, the Millennium Puzzle, he warned us of its power and also about the power of the other items."

"Doma." Ryou said the word slowly. "Yes, I remember that name…The spirit chose not to pick a fight with Dartz. He went away for so long that I tricked myself into thinking that he was gone for good. I was a fool." He stared reflectively down at his drink. "I'm sorry." He looked up and laughed briefly. "You don't want to hear about that…"

"No, it's fine. It's really kind of nice. Se—My boyfriend doesn't believe in magic, or at least, he says he doesn't, so it's refreshing to talk to someone who knows just as well as I do that it's real." Ryou smiled, his amber eyes lighting up, though he was deeply disappointed that Alistair had a boyfriend.

"I know what you mean. Most people, outside of my friends, tend to think I'm crazy. And my long, un-excused absences from school didn't look all that great to colleges either. I had to take night classes just to get my high school diploma and I have to see a psychiatrist who wrote a note for the university explaining that my behavior was the result of a psychotic break. She gave me a prescription, but I just toss the pills. They wouldn't have helped at the time, and I don't need them now." He frowned. "The spirit made a mess of my life for five years and even now that he's gone I'm still putting the pieces back together."

"I know the feeling. As soon as Dartz…disappeared I guess, I realized that my life was a complete mess. Actually, I didn't even have a life. I had to rely on other people's charity which just isn't who I am. I like to be the one responsible for my own successes and failures. Ironically though, I've almost always found myself being used by someone else, or been dependent on someone else. That's finally starting to change though."

"There's still hope for me then." It was at that moment, looking into the Brit's sincere and open face that Alistair realized that Ryou _was_ hoping for more than just a couple of books.

"I might be reading into this more than I should," he started. "But I think that you should know that I'm seeing someone."

"Yes, you mentioned that. It's Kaiba, isn't it?" Alistair's eyes widened.

"How did you know that?" he asked in astonishment. Ryou smiled sadly.

"I don't need a Millennium Item to figure that out. There aren't too many people I know whose names start 'Se' who don't believe in magic." He took a final sip of his soda. "Don't worry: I won't tell anyone, I promise." There was a short pause. "Thank you for letting me borrow the books."

"No problem." Alistair was still reeling from how easily Ryou had discovered his connection to Seto. Ryou placed some money on the table next to his empty glass.

"I have to go. I'll call you when I'm done with the books. And thank you again."

"You can call me for more than just that."

"Only if you don't mind hanging out with a certified psycho." Ryou's smile was coy.

"I could say the same to you; I've done some pretty questionable things myself, but without having the excuse of an ancient Egyptian spirit possessing me."

"Well, if you ever feel like exploring that I can recommend my psychiatrist to you as long as you don't mind having to wade through a lot of metaphors."

"Tcha. Maybe I should."

"I'll see you around Alistair," Ryou said as he picked up the stack of books, looking directly into Alistair's eyes. "Bye."

He managed to maintain his composure until he was outside and had rounded the corner. Then he paused and let out a breath. This had been a big step for him.

Being the host of the evil spirit, although it had been terrifying and had made him feel helpless, had ultimately made him stronger. He was no longer the naïve and frail boy he had once been. The spirit had hardened him. Gone were the round cheeks and un-toned body, and in their place the spirit had left a more angular face, lithe physique, and an altogether stronger person who, despite his ordeal, had managed to maintain his characteristic sweetness.

Only a few years earlier he never would have managed to work up the courage to talk to Alistair.

How extraordinary it was that Alistair was dating Kaiba of all people. Ryou had, more from a sense of intuition than anything else, long since suspected that the powerful CEO was gay, so that wasn't what was interesting. What he found intriguing was that Alistair seemed to care about him. Ryou didn't know all that much about Kaiba, but his general impression was that he was arrogant and a sore loser, nothing that led him to think that the handsome brunette was someone who would be easy to fall for. Clearly there was more to Seto Kaiba than he'd thought. Still, it really was a pity that his crush on the redhead would go unrequited, though he rejoiced in how normal Alistair had acted, despite knowing about the evil spirit. Yugi, Joey, Téa, and Tristan still acted skittishly around him even though they knew that the Millennium Ring was gone for good, but Alistair hadn't.

He began walking towards the bus stop, hugging Alistair's books to his chest.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Here we enter into the realm of headcanon. Yes it's a bit cliche to have Ryou be gay, however, I argue that that isn't wildly unbelievable. Next, Ryou is a hard character to keep IC and gets botched a lot in the opinion of the fans. I propose a balance between shy, polite and sweet Ryou, and occult obsessed and 'weird' Ryou. Also keep in mind that I draw mostly from DM (sub and dub) and not the manga; though it might creep in from time to time.


	11. To Tell or Not to Tell

**Disclaimer**: I can huff and puff, but neither of those things will magically make Yu-Gi-Oh! my property.

* * *

_"Got a secret, can you keep it?_

_Swear this one you'll save_

_Better lock it in your pocket, taking this one to the grave." _

~Secret, The Pierces

**Chapter 11**

Seto wearily began reading through the _Out Loud_ article for what felt like the millionth time, highlighting the key points and cursing Britney Whinnery for being so long-winded. He was feeling confident about Monday's meeting. Even if she refused to attend the press conference he was willing to bet that for a fee she'd change her mind; everyone had their price after all and he was certain he could pay hers.

There was a light know on his office door.

"What is it Mokuba?" he asked without looking up. Trudy would never dare disturb him while he was working, and Alistair never bothered to knock, leaving only one person that it could be.

"Um, do you have a minute?" Seto set the magazine aside.

"What?" he repeated.

"It's Hilary's birthday tomorrow and I wanted to do something really nice for her. I already bought a present and all that, but I really want to take her up in the helicopter. I asked Roland but he told me to ask you."

"Go ahead," he answered. "But make sure it's ok with her parents," he added. "I don't feel like dealing with them calling to complain about their daughter being put in danger; I've got more important things on my plate right now."

"I didn't even think about that." It was testament to how accustomed Mokuba was to life without parental supervision. "Ok, I'll call them." He noticed the article the magazine his brother had been looking at. "Do you really think that this could damage KC's reputation?"

"It already has. Ever since it came out we've been getting calls and emails from people demanding that we do something about it, there are feminist, LGBT, and minority organizations that have stated that they're going to boycott us, and even Pegasus called to tell me that if this doesn't blow over he might break our partnership."

"He wouldn't!" Mokuba gasped.

"Let's hope not." Seto had been furious when the call had come through, though he knew that beneath the carefree exterior, Pegasus was shaken by this sudden turn in the KC's fortunes too, because their situation was a rather co-dependent one.

Kaiba Corp had really made a name for itself as a gaming company after coming out with the holographic dueling arenas. People were amazed by the graphics and had started flocking to watch matches, which in turn had bolstered Duel Monster card and merchandise sales, resulting in an international phenomenon. Without the KC technology there was no guarantee that Duel Monsters would stay popular. Even if Pegasus partnered with Schroeder Corp, they didn't have nearly the same clout or flawless holographics that Kaiba Corp did. They needed each other. But as Pegasus had explained, if this article shot KC's reputation he'd have no choice but to abandon ship and take his chances with someone else.

"_I'm counting on you to turn this around, Kaiba Boy,"_ Pegasus had said before hanging up. _"Siegfried von Schroeder just doesn't have your sense of style."_ If he had a sense of humor Seto would have found that funny given that Siegfried and Pegasus shared a love of foppery, but as it was the conversation had only served to put more pressure on him.

"If you want my help, just tell me," Mokuba said. "I don't know what I can do, but if there's something…"

"There isn't."

"Ok...Well thanks for letting me use the helicopter! I really hope her parents say that it's ok; I know she'd really love it!" Seto nodded absently, already glancing back at the article. "Hey Seto?" He looked up again. "How come you and Alistair never go on dates?"

"Because we aren't dating." The answer was so unexpected that it took Mokuba a moment to respond.

"What do you mean you aren't dating?" he asked finally, staring at his brother. "What would you call it?" Seto sighed.

"I don't know Mokuba; I never thought about it."

"I mean, you love him, don't you?"

"Why are you asking me this?"

"Because neither of you ever talk about it. You act like you barely know each other most of the time, but I mean, you flew out to save him when you thought he was in danger, and you two sleep together, so I know that you care which is why I don't understand why you never talk about it."

"I'm not a thirteen year old girl; I don't feel the need to tell everyone every detail of my personal life, and neither does Alistair."

"There's a difference between not sharing every detail and saying that you're not dating the person you've been sleeping and living with for the past year."

"Let's get one thing perfectly clear: it is none of your business what Alistair and I do or don't do, understand?"

"So we're keeping secrets from each other now?" Mokuba asked, a wounded expression on his face.

"It's not a secret, Mokuba," he said in a less confrontational voice. "It's just none of your business. I don't ask you about Hilary, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't ask me about Alistair."

"Are you ashamed of it?" the teen persisted. "Because I really don't care if you like guys. I don't think that there's anything wrong with that."

"That has nothing to do with it."

"Then what is it about Alistair that makes you so cagey?"

"_Nothing_," Seto snapped. "Look, I don't know what you want me to say!"

"Nothing, I just wish you wouldn't be so weird about it."

"I don't understand what you mean by weird." Mokuba couldn't believe that his brother, a certified genius since the age of nine, didn't grasp what was so odd about the situation.

"You're telling me that there isn't anything strange about the fact that you and Alistair act like acquaintances around each other? That the only time I've ever seen you show any kind of affection towards each other was when you were both blackout drunk? That you don't think of what you two are doing as dating?"

"You saw that?" Seto asked, horrified. Annoyed that that was Seto's takeaway, Mokuba nevertheless answered the question.

"Just for a second. You two woke me up when you fell down the stairs and I went to go see what had fallen." Seeing the look on his brother's face, he added: "don't worry, you were just kissing." Only partially relieved, Seto said:

"I'm sorry you had to see that. That was…that'll never happen again."

"I was a little bit startled, but it's not like you guys were…you know. And I mean, Hilary and I kiss too, so I'm not a prude, it was just that you're my brother…Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I don't want you to think that I have a problem with you and Alistair being gay." It was the first time that anyone had put that label on Seto directly and he wasn't sure how to feel about it.

He hadn't grown up living under a rock, and Gozaburo had had plenty to say on the subject, frequently calling Seto a 'sissy' and a 'faggot' if he did something that the former Kaiba Corp CEO deemed weak, so the label of 'gay' had always had a bad connotation in his mind. Objectively he supposed that since the first time that he and Alistair had kissed he'd known that that's what he was, but in his head he had never considered his attraction to Alistair 'gay.' Having Mokuba say that drove home just how absurd the accusations in the _Out Loud_ article were. He had to laugh.

"What's funny?"

"This." Seto held up the magazine. "This girl," he waved it, "thinks that I chose those uniforms so that all the other men and I could, I don't know, get some kind of a kick out of being able to see their cleavage, and she claims that I'm homophobic because there aren't any gay people in positions of power. This entire thing is ridiculous!"

"Then you know the solution, right?" Seto stopped laughing.

"What do you mean?"

"If you came out as gay, her article would lose a lot of its power." Seto stared at his brother. It was so simple. The answer had been there the entire time.

"Yes," he agreed slowly. He sat back in his chair. "I'll only get one shot with that though, so I have to make it count. Hmmm…When I meet with her on Monday I'll say exactly what I was planning to say and get her to agree to the press conference, then, once we're on live TV, right when she thinks that she's won, I'll get her!

Of course there will be other consequences, but nothing I can't handle, and then the gay rights organizations will have no choice but to support me! Since it's so politically correct to champion gay rights right now I'll be untouchable! Why didn't I think of this before?" How could he ever have thought that keeping his relationship with Alistair a secret was so imperative?

Sure the paparazzi would follow him around for a while, but who said that that had to be a bad thing? Magazines like _Out Loud_ might be supporting Schroeder Corp now, but once they saw just how gay friendly Kaiba Corp was they'd start singing a different tune. And even though it was obvious to just about everyone what team Siegfried batted for, he'd never said it publicly, so Seto was going to beat him to the punch yet again.

"Mokuba: this is brilliant!" Mokuba had no idea what had prompted this sudden and drastic change in Seto's outlook on the situation, but he was glad for it; his brother's confidence and zeal were catching.

* * *

Alistair, having gotten lunch at the diner, had gone on to Darren's apartment building, only to find out that he didn't live there anymore, and the current tenants had no idea where he lived now. Frustrated, he had gone back to _Twist_ to ask if anyone knew Darren, which most of the people there did, but they didn't have his number.

Cursing his bad luck, he'd gone to several other pubs in the area, the ones that were open already, but didn't find Darren or anyone who knew where he was. Running out of options, he slumped over the counter of the pub he was in and ordered a beer even though it wasn't even five yet.

"Rough day?" the bartender, a burly late middle aged man asked as he handed Alistair the cool glass bottle.

"Yeah."

"Bad break up?"

"No." Alistair took a sip. "I'm just trying to find someone."

"Oh is _that_ why you've been talking to everyone in the place? I just assumed you were looking for drugs or something." Alistair shook his head.

"Who is it that you're looking for?"

"His name's Darren Wiley."

"Sorry, I don't know him. Is he missing?"

"No, I just need to talk to him. He knows something that he's not supposed to and I'm afraid that he'll tell someone." The bartender had a very open, fatherly face, and Alistair found himself going into greater detail. "I wasn't supposed to tell anyone about who I'm seeing, but Darren figured it out and I have to try to convince him to keep it a secret or else the person that I'm with…he'll be really angry with me because he's afraid that if people know it'll ruin his reputation."

"Listen," the bartender said. "Things aren't like they used to be. When I was your age coming out was an absolute no-go. You could lose your job, your family, your friends, you could even get killed. Now I'm not saying that those things don't still happen, they do, but that's changing. So even if this Darren guy tells someone about your boyfriend, that's not the death sentence it used to be."

"Try telling him that," Alistair muttered vehemently, suddenly angry with Seto for having made an issue out of the matter in the first place. He took a moody swig of beer, the bitter taste matching his mood perfectly.

"Do you want my advice?" Alistair looked up at him. "I've seen a lot of guys try to make dating a closet-case work. At first the secret rendezvous' seem romantic and exciting, but ultimately I've never seen it end well. Believe me, I've tried it myself. But after a while I realized that being with him just made me feel ashamed of who I was. I'd already come out once after going through years of doubt and self-loathing and I wasn't going to let myself fall back to that place. It was ugly."

"I'm not ashamed of who I am," Alistair argued defensively. "I've been through a lot, and I've done things I'm not proud of, but I'm not ashamed of _this_."

"What's your name?" the bartender asked suddenly.

"Alistair."

"That's a nice name. Look: I've been with my husband for fifteen years Alistair. And when I'm feeling low, unattractive, old, do you know what he does for me? He takes me out on the town and tells random strangers that he's the luckiest man in the world to have me on his arm.

This boyfriend of yours, is he the love of your life? The one that you want to fall asleep with every night and wake up with every morning?" Alistair thought about it.

"I think so."

"Are you sure? See, I feel like to earn the title of 'love of someone's life' a person has to make you feel as special as you think that they are. By making your relationship out to be something shameful that needs to stay hidden, tell me: how is this man making you feel special?"

"I'm the only one he's ever been with. He doesn't trust people usually. And I know that he loves me even if he doesn't say so in so many words." He thought back to how he had slowly earned Seto's trust, remembered how he'd felt when he'd woken up in the hospital after being dumped there by the members of Robinhood to see Seto lying on his chest, having come to bring him home. He thought about the way that Seto looked at him sometimes, usually late at night and after Alistair had given some kind of pick-me-up speech, how he kissed him, held him. Seto did love him, and he didn't need the brunette to parade him up and down the street in order to feel special.

"I have to go," he said suddenly, pulling enough money out of his jacket pocket to pay for at least three beers. "Thank you for talking to me."

"I hope I was helpful in some way."

Once outside of the pub, Alistair pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and called Seto.

"Perfect timing," Seto said, his tone much more upbeat than usual. "I was just about to call you. Are you still at work?"

"Oh, no. I just left."

"Are you on your way home?"

"Actually no, that's what I was calling to tell you. Moira's boyfriend just broke up with her and I offered to keep her company. I'll probably end up staying at her place tonight." He couldn't believe how naturally the lie rolled off his tongue.

"Oh." Seto was disappointed. He'd been hoping to tell Alistair about his plan that night, but he didn't want to do it over the phone; he wanted to see the redhead's face when he told him.

"Why, did you need me for something?"

"No. I'll see you tomorrow then." He hung up.

_What was that about?_ Alistair wondered. He was certain that there was no way Seto could know that he was lying about going to Moira's, so he had no idea what about what he'd said had caused the brunette to act so put out.

He got back on his motorcycle and roared off to the bank to get enough money out of the account he'd set up after getting all of his legal documents to pay for a motel, food, and cover for _Byzantium_. He was more determined than ever now to find Darren so that he could protect both himself and Seto.

* * *

As Seto got into bed that night, he realized that it would be the first time he slept alone since returning from Egypt. He didn't like it. His bed seemed far too large without Alistair lying beside him.

* * *

Alistair awoke the next morning in the seedy motel room he'd rented the night before, tired beyond belief. He'd arrived at _Byzantium_ when it opened and had stayed until it closed, but Darren had never shown up. He glanced at his cell phone. How could it be so late already? If he didn't hurry he'd be late for work.

He splashed cold water from the sink on his face and pulled on the same clothes he'd worn the night before. They smelled of old cigarette smoke, but there was little he could do about it.

After making sure he wasn't leaving anything behind, he hurried downstairs, checked out of the motel, and jumped on his bike. He managed to get to the library just in time to clock in only to find out that this time someone really did need him to cover their shift which meant that he would be stuck there until the library closed at nine, leaving him very little time to search for Darren. He never should have said that he'd be available to take extra shifts.

* * *

Seto, who was currently going over his plan of attack for his meeting with Britney Whinnery the next day with his lawyer, Roland, and the head of PR, was running on empty. He hadn't been able to fall asleep the night before and had ended up staying up all night fiddling with his new Duel Disk design. It was only thanks to the power of caffeine that he was even standing, but by six that evening his fatigue was starting to catch up with him, despite the many cups of coffee he'd had.

After almost falling asleep at his desk while trying to write out an email to the manager of the San Francisco Kaiba Land to assure him that he'd send someone from HQ to look into a bug in their graphics system, Seto decided to go for a walk. He left his office and took the elevator down to the programming department to see if he could convince one of them to fly to California to give the system there a once over. Normally this was the kind of thing he'd tell Roland to do, but seeing as how he would only be able to keep his eyes open if he kept walking around, he opted to deal with it himself. He already knew who he wanted to ask too.

As soon as he hit the floor, everyone went into a panic, though they tried to keep it contained. A visit from Seto Kaiba almost always meant that someone had screwed up. Seto ignored all of the tense faces and marched up to the floor's supervisor.

"Is something wrong, sir?" the man asked nervously.

"I'm looking for a girl named Momo Tojikamuri."

"Momo?" Since joining the team Momo had proven to be one of the best programmers there, so what she could have done to elicit a visit from Mr. Kaiba the supervisor had no idea.

"Yes. I need to talk to her."

"Yes sir. One moment. He hurried off and returned a minute later with the pretty brunette.

"Hi," she greeted Seto and her boss was shocked by her show of familiarity.

"Have you ever been to California?" She shook her head. "How do you feel about going there next week to fix the bug in their graphics system?" Her dark eyes widened.

"You'd want _me_ to do that?" He nodded. She secretly suspected that the job offer had less to do with her level of competence and more to do with her gender given everything that had been going on recently, but she wasn't about to pass up an all-expenses paid trip to San Francisco on moral grounds. Besides, she didn't believe that Seto Kaiba was the sexist pig that he was being made out to be. "When would you need me to go?"

"Sometime next week. I'll have my secretary send you a formal email. I just wanted to see if you were interested."

"Sign me up."

"Good. That's all." His goal accomplished, he turned and swept back to the elevator as quickly as he'd come without a backward glance.

His walk had served its purpose, and upon returning to his office where a fresh cup of coffee was waiting for him, courtesy of his secretary, he metaphorically rolled up his sleeves and prepared to tackle the many emails he still had to answer.

* * *

He was halfway through his second shift when Alistair had a sudden flash of insight. He had been concentrating on finding Darren when he should have been looking for Britney. Surely since she was working as a journalist she'd have some kind of contact information. All he had to do was look it up.

He glanced around for his boss before making his way to the library's collection of magazines. He was almost positive that they had a subscription to _Out Loud_. Sure enough, there it was: the latest edition. He reached for it triumphantly and flipped to the title article with the now familiar pictures and charts. And next to Britney's name: an email address. He stared at it for twenty seconds, memorizing it, before putting the magazine back.

Before he had the chance to get to a computer and email her, a middle aged woman came up to him and asked if he could help her find a book her ten year old daughter could write a book report on. She turned out to be extremely picky, and the task took far longer than he felt it should have, but eventually the woman left, satisfied with the final selection.

Finally he had a moment to use the computer, but he knew he'd have to be crafty if he didn't want to get in trouble. He decided to solicit Zoe for her help.

"I have to send an email," he told her. "It's important. If anyone asks, can I tell them I'm looking up something for you? A book someone called about?"

"Sure," she replied, happy that he seemed to be coming to think of her as a confidant.

"Thank you." He sat in one of the swivel chairs at one of the computers and booted up the web browser, logging into his email account, which he only ever used to communicate with his boss, who sent out the new schedules via email. He quickly typed a message to Britney:

_Hey, it's Alistair. I know it's been a while, but can you do me a favor? I don't know what, if anything, Darren told you about me and Kaiba, but please don't mention it at your meeting tomorrow. That has nothing to do with why you attacked Kaiba Corp in your article and he's already planning on doing what you want him to do, so there's no need to blackmail him with that. ~Alistair_

It was a vague message at best, but he figured that if she _did_ know something, the meaning would be obvious. Given that he hadn't talked to them in months he wasn't sure that it would be enough to convince her if she did know what he was talking about, but it was legitimately the best he could do and it was his last chance. If she didn't write back, or worse; told him flat out that she didn't care and was going to tell him anyway, he'd be forced to tell Seto about it which he didn't want to do.

* * *

Britney had been in the middle of video chatting with her best friend from her hometown when she heard her email ding.

"Hang on Kia," she said. "I just got an email; it's probably from Kaiba Corp with the details about tomorrow." She clicked over to her email and was surprised to see that it wasn't from Kaiba Corp, but from Alistair if the screen name was anything to go on. She clicked on it and scanned the message which was just as startling as hearing from the redhead after he'd seemingly fallen off the face of the earth.

"Can I call you back?" she asked. "I have to deal with this."

"Sure. I should get going anyway; I have a paper due tomorrow and it's not going to write itself. Bye!" Without powering her laptop down, Britney pulled her cell phone and called Darren.

"What's up?" he asked.

"You'll never believe who just emailed me."

"Who?"

"Alistair."

"_What_? Since when is he back in town?"

"I have no idea, but he knows about our meeting with Kaiba tomorrow; that's what he emailed me about; to tell us not to tell Kaiba about what we know about the two of them sleeping together."

"How did he know we're meeting with Kaiba?"

"Oh I don't know, maybe because he and Kaiba are still an item. Genius." She rolled her eyes.

"That can't be right….He told me that he was going home to do some sort of humanitarian work and since he wasn't in Domino legally in the first place it should have been next to impossible to come back."

"Unless you have someone with deep pockets to get you a fake passport. Anyway, he doesn't want you to use his relationship with Kaiba against him at the meeting tomorrow, and I agree that that'd be a pretty low thing to do. We may not like Kaiba, but he's still technically one of us, closeted or not."

"Just because we both fuck guys doesn't mean that he and I are in any way the same."

"This isn't a dong measuring contest Darren, and I'm putting my foot down. Either you promise not to try to blackmail him with that or you aren't going."

"Ugh! Fine. Have it your way; we'll play fair despite knowing that _he_ won't."

"Apropos: did you get my email with all of my notes and stuff for tomorrow?"

"Yeah. And I talked to Luke too and he says that legally he's pretty sure we're alright, but he also said that we'll be on our own tomorrow law-wise since we won't have a lawyer there to bear witness to whatever might happen."

"Not true: my dad said he'd go with us."

"What? Your dad? I thought you guys were still fighting."

"We are, but when I called to tell mom about what's going on, she told him and he's insisting on coming to make sure that you and I don't get screwed over. I said that in that email I sent you."

"Well I didn't read it; I just downloaded the attachments."

"Remind me why you're going again."

"Moral support so that you don't cry when Kaiba goes for your jugular."

"Oh yeah."

* * *

Alistair didn't get the chance to check his email until the last ten minutes of his shift, though he figured it was probably just as well. To his immense relief, Britney had gotten his message and promised not to use the knowledge against Seto.

The lead that had settled in his gut suddenly disappeared and it was with a much lighter heart that he left the library that night.

Upon arriving at the mansion and parking his motorcycle in the garage he walked upstairs to Mokuba's room to see if the teen had ordered take-out yet.

"Hey Alistair," Mokuba said, the momentary distraction causing his avatar to fall off a cliff.

"Sorry," Alistair said, realizing he'd been the cause of the character's untimely demise. Mokuba waved his apology away.

"I wasn't at an important part. Anyway, where have you been? I haven't seen you since Saturday morning."

"A friend of mine just got broken up with so I spent the night at her place."

"Seto told me you had a double shift at work."

"Yeah, I went to her place after I got off work and then today I had another double shift. That's what I get for being such a pushover." Mokuba wasn't sure that 'pushover' was a word he'd use to describe the fiery redhead who was anything but. He got the sense that Alistair wasn't being completely truthful, but he wasn't sure why he would lie. As far as he knew, Seto and Alistair were happy together. He decided he was just being paranoid.

"Oh. Hey, did you talk to Seto yet?"

"About what?"

"So you haven't."

"Why, what happened?" Mokuba smiled and bit his lip.

"Go ask him. He's been dying to tell you. I haven't seen him this excited about something in ages."

"He's home already?"

"He didn't sleep last night so he came home at around seven. He's probably passed out in your bedroom."

"_My_ bedroom?"

"Well, his technically."

"I don't want to wake him up if he hasn't slept yet."

"Believe me: he'd want you to. What he wants to tell you is about you, sort of." Intrigued, Alistair left Mokuba to his game, the take-out forgotten, and walked to Seto's room.

As Mokuba had described, Seto was fast asleep and if he hadn't been so curious about what Seto had to say, Alistair wouldn't have had the heart to wake him. As it was he sat down next to the brunette on the bed and shook him gently.

"Seto, wake up." Seto, who had been having a dream involving riding the Blue Eyes White Dragon and chasing Joey Wheeler through Kaiba Land, groggily and with great difficulty, opened his eyes. His first conscious emotion was annoyance at having been woken up, but when he realized that it was Alistair who had shaken him, he sat up and rubbed his eyes, trying to force himself to be more alert.

"Where have you been?" he asked blearily.

"I told you; I stayed at Moira's yesterday and then I had another double shift today."

"You smell like cigarettes."

"Yeah, she smokes when she's upset. What did you want to tell me? Mokuba made it sound like it was important." Suddenly fully awake, Seto put his hands on Alistair's shoulders.

"I'm going to tell everyone about us." Alistair's eyes widened in complete and utter shock. If he hadn't known for a fact that he was awake he would have been certain that he was dreaming.

"_What_?" he managed to say finally.

"I got the idea when I was talking to Mokuba. It's brilliant: if I come out as gay not only will her whole argument about me being sexist be invalid, but no one will care since they'll be too busy writing about my announcement! Pegasus won't have to partner with Siegfried, and Siegfried will look like an idiot for having criticized me! And then you won't have to pretend that you're just an employee anymore." Alistair had no idea what to say; he was still processing what Seto had said. Of course it made sense; to be honest, he was surprised that Seto hadn't thought of it the moment the article had come out, and he was certainly glad that Seto was coming around about keeping him a dirty little secret, but it was a lot to adjust to all at once. "Speechless?" Seto asked, smirking. Good. He hoped that Britney and every other person in the world would have a similar reaction. He always liked putting on a good show as long as it was on his terms.

"You…"

"I'm brilliant, I know." Seto pressed his forehead against Alistair's. "I want you to be there," he said, kissing Alistair lightly. "If you want to be." Alistair found himself nodding, though he was still reeling from the news. Seto yawned suddenly, his spurt of adrenaline exhausted.

"You should go back to sleep," Alistair advised him.

"Probably," Seto agreed, yawning again and lying back down. "I can't wait to see the look on her face." He chuckled. "She'll say something like: 'don't you think there's something inherently sexist and demeaning about forcing your female employees to dress provocatively for your own enjoyment?' and then I'll say: I agree that that would be sexist and demeaning, and any man at Kaiba Corp who views women as sexual objects is a pig. I'm very grateful that you brought the issue to my attention. Then she'll say: 'you can't expect anyone to believe that you didn't notice that all the women who work for you have their breasts falling out of their shirts.' And then I'll say: if I were a straight man I wouldn't expect you to believe it, but as it is…" He laughed again. "She won't know what hit her."

"No, probably not," Alistair agreed, not able to match Seto's level of jubilance.

"What's wrong?" Seto asked.

"Long day at work," he lied, lying down next to the brunette and resting his head in the hollow of his neck, breathing in the smell of his cologne. Now that he knew what Seto planned to do, he should have been pleased, but as it was all he could think about was how many lies he'd told that weekend and how afraid he was that they'd come back to haunt him. He wished he could just skip to the end of the week once all of this was over.

He sat back up and got on top of Seto, leaning down to kiss him deeply, his hands cradling the CEO's head.

"I'm too tired for that," Seto told him honestly.

"That's ok," Alistair said softly, stroking his face.

"What's gotten into you all of a sudden? You're not usually this affectionate." Alistair shrugged.

"I don't know." Seto stared steadily into the redhead's eyes, wishing he could read his mind. He was mentally drained, but he could still tell that there was something Alistair wasn't telling him. "Go back to sleep," Alistair said for a second time, breaking eye contact and getting off of Seto. "You have a big day tomorrow."

"What am I, six? I _know_." Alistair threw his hands up in defeat.

"Ok. Well, I'm going to go take a shower and get something to eat, then I think I'll go to bed too, but don't wait up for me."

"I don't think I could even if I tried," Seto replied, yawning for a third time and rolling onto his side. He fell asleep almost immediately. Alistair waited until Seto's breathing evened out and became deep and steady before getting out of the bed to go to the bathroom and take a shower.

Once under the steaming water, he hoped he'd be able to wash off the slimy feeling that had come over him, though he held little hope. He never should have allowed Darren to figure out that he was seeing Seto, and he definitely had had no right telling the art student about Seto cutting himself or any of the other personal things he'd revealed.

He'd all but forgotten about Darren since leaving to join Robinhood, but now his betrayal of Seto's trust was back to haunt him. Britney had promised not to say anything, and Alistair believed her, but the whole thing was reminding him of just how guilty he'd felt at the time.

After getting out of the shower and stealing down to the kitchen to rummage around for food, Alistair got into bed, wrapping an arm around Seto's sleeping form.

_I'm so sorry_, he thought as he was falling asleep.

* * *

Author's Note: As is supported by the canon, Seto's willing to do just about anything for his company, and while I don't necessarily see it as a good thing to come out simply to save his company's reputation, that's how he is.

As for Alistair-he tried his best, truly, to protect both himself and Seto, but will it be enough?


	12. Betrayal

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! which is one of my deepest life regrets.

* * *

___"Secrets are like plants. _

___They can stay buried deep in the earth for a long time, but eventually they'll send up shoots and give themselves away. _

___They have to. It's their nature. _

___Just a tiny green stem at first. Which slowly, insidiously grows taller, stronger, unfolding itself, until there it is. _

___A big fat secret, right in front of your face; a fully bloomed flower perfumed with the scent of deception."  
_

___― _Judy Reene Singer, _Still Life With Elephant_

**Chapter 12**

_He was standing in Kam, leader of Robinhood's office. Mokuba was lying in the corner, his arms duct-taped behind his back, his ankles taped together, and another piece of tape over his mouth._

"_Maybe you aren't useless after all," Kam noted, and Darren, clad in a camouflage-colored uniform, clapped Alistair on the shoulder. _

"_What are you talking about?" Alistair demanded. Kam snapped his fingers, and Pegasus and Siegfried von Schroeder walked in the door behind them, dragging Seto along with them. Seto quickly took in the scene._

"_Mokuba!" he said, struggling against Pegasus and Siegfried's strong grip on his upper arms. "Mokuba!" His gaze shifted to Alistair. "You promised that you'd keep him safe!" Before Alistair could reply, Kam spoke for him._

"_Keep him safe? You're naïve Seto Kaiba. Alistair's orders were to bring him to us."_

"_What?" Seto's eyes widened in shock._

"_No, Seto, that's not true," Alistair said quickly. "I didn't know!" _

"_You liar!" Seto shouted, trying to wrench himself from his captors' grasp. "Liar!" _

"Alistair, wake up!" Alistair sat up so quickly that he almost head butted Seto on accident. His heart was racing and he felt a drop of sweat roll down the side of his face.

"It was just a nightmare," Seto said reassuringly. "It wasn't real. Was it about your brother again?" he asked after a pause while Alistair continued to completely pull himself out of the dream.

"No. It was about Mokuba. I was supposed to keep him safe, but I couldn't."

"You would never let anything bad happen to him any more than I would. Now come on, get a hold of yourself and go back to sleep." Still shaken, Alistair lay back down and Seto pulled him against his chest like he always did when the redhead had a nightmare, knowing full well that he couldn't really protect him from the things he saw in his dreams.

* * *

Even though he knew it was irrational, it was with a great sense of foreboding that Alistair said goodbye to Seto the next morning as the brunette left for work and his meeting with Britney.

Shaking off Alistair's strange behavior, Seto tried to focus on putting up his usual mental defenses. Given the very personal nature of Britney Whinnery's accusations, he had no doubt that she would try to say things to rile him up and he needed to make sure that she couldn't.

He met Roland at his office door.

"Are you ready, sir?" Roland asked.

"Of course." Seto's posture was perfect, not a hair was out of place, his mouth was a thin line, but he didn't appear to be anything less than self-assured; the picture of confidence; the image of Seto Kaiba that everyone had come to expect.

"We've heard from her laywer," Roland filled him in. "Apparently it's her father. He's a prosecutor, but his record is spotty at best. I don't think it's anything to worry about."

"It wouldn't matter even if he was top-notch; we aren't doing anything underhanded; just having a friendly chat. Besides, even if for some reason they chose to prosecute us; they wouldn't win. And who's the 'friend' she's bringing with her? Her boyfriend?"

"Presumably. His name is Darren Wiley. He was an art student at Domino U who graduated along with Miss Whinnery this last spring. He's credited on her website as being a research assistant for her exposés."

"Fine. I'm slated to meet with them after lunch in the board room, correct?" Roland nodded. "Good. Alert me when Mr. Uedo arrives. Until then, I'll be in my office."

"Yessir."

Seto spent the morning idly answering emails and reading memos. He had Valarie send Momo Tojikamuri a formal email to enlist her to travel to San Francisco's Kaiba Land and even had a moment to rearrange the trophies lining the walls. He was pumped full of confidence induced adrenaline the likes of which he hadn't felt since before his duel with Yugi at his duel dome. Unlike that time, there were no ancient spirits to get in his way which put his chances of success at close to one hundred percent. The knowledge that he was about to win a battle of wits without even breaking a sweat was utterly intoxicating and it took more willpower than he would have expected to keep a self-satisfied smirk off his face when he entered the board room.

He gaze swept over the small group of people and finally stopped on Britney Whinnery; the only woman in the room. She was shorter than he'd been picturing and much more meek looking with glasses and cornrows with beads entwined in the braids. She was wearing a salmon colored pants suit and nervously clutching onto a stack of papers. He could break her easily. Next he appraised her boyfriend, Darren Wiley, taking in his unshaven face, ponytail, and earring. He put Seto in mind of the kind of person Joey Wheeler would hang out with, meaning he would probably talk a big talk, but no one would take it seriously—Seto included. As for the girls' father, he was wearing a suit that was too big in the shoulder which told Seto all that he felt he needed to know.

The moment that he stepped into the room, everyone's eyes turned to him. He saw Britney take a deep breath, Darren curl his lip up slightly, and Uedo snap to attention. He sat at the head of the table with his lawyer and Roland hovering nearby.

"Please, take a seat," he said with palpably artificial hospitality. Darren, Britney, and her father all sat down. After sending Roland off to meet with the financial division manager on his behalf he began to speak.

"First off, I wanted to thank you all for coming here today," he started. "You, Miss Whinnery, have achieved something that no other journalist has managed before, which is to say, you have gotten my attention, so congratulations." She smiled awkwardly while next to her Darren began to glare at him, looking like he wanted to say something scathing. "The concerns you raised have not fallen on deaf ears. I agree with the points you raised and have been taking steps to makes some changes in several of our policies. Policies that are, as I'm sure you would agree, old fashioned and outdated, just like the previous owner of this company." Unable to do anything else, she nodded while Darren continued to not so subtly gnash his teeth. By this point Seto was completely in his element. He loved getting under people's skin by way of being pleasantly unpleasant (though he loathed it when others, namely Pegasus, did that to him). "This Thursday I'm planning on holding a press conference, and I asked you here today to invite you to interview me since you're the one that raised such an interest in my company. Before you say anything, know that we are prepared to compensate you." He snapped his fingers and Uedo took a white envelope off the clipboard he'd been holding and handed it to Seto who slid it across the table to Britney.

Unsure what else to do, she opened the envelope and removed a check. Her eyes widened and Darren and her father looked over each of her shoulders to read the number written on the paper. Britney started to say something, but her father cut her off.

"I need a moment to discuss this with my daughter," he said firmly, taking the check from her and placing it back on the table.

"By all means," Seto said graciously. "My lawyer can go with you to answer any questions you may have." The three of them got up to have a quick powwow in the hallway, leaving Darren and Seto seated at the table. "Your girlfriend is quite extraordinary," he told the scruffy man politely, a smirk playing around his mouth.

"She's not my girlfriend, but she is extraordinary," Darren replied, trying to keep his anger in check, knowing that if he decked Kaiba all hell would break loose. What made the whole thing worse was that he knew that Kaiba knew exactly how annoying he was being and was doing it precisely to get a rise out of him. What did Alistair see in Seto Kaiba that he found so redeeming? All Darren could assume was that Alistair just liked him because he was rich and handsome, but had tricked himself into thinking it was more than that.

Up close, Darren was unable to ignore Kaiba's undeniable beauty, but as much as he wouldn't mind having sex with him, possibly more than once, he also wanted to wipe the cocky smirk off his face with his fist.

"Oh, well if you're not her boyfriend, it's quite nice of you to come and support her in her moment of triumph."

"Her boyfriend had a class today, so he couldn't be here."

"That's too bad." Darren decided he couldn't handle Kaiba's smug smile any longer, and narrowing his eyes and trying to match the expression he said:

"And where's _your_ boyfriend?" Seto's smirk disappeared.

"What did you just say to me?" he asked angrily.

"Since we were having a polite conversation, I simply asked you, since you asked about Britney, why _your_ boyfriend isn't here to support _you_. Is he too busy saving the world?" Seto frowned.

"I dare you to say that with my lawyer in the room; you'd be finished. You're already finished."

"Am I? I don't feel very finished. Look: I know that you're planning something. I don't know what it is, but you're not going to get away with making Britney look like a fool just because you're a sore loser. She didn't want to use this against you because she says that you're 'one of us.' But you're not. You're a greedy, selfish brat who's used to getting everything he wants. Well not this time. If you try to pull anything funny, I will tell everyone about Alistair." To Darren's astonishment, though Seto looked surprised, he didn't seem as upset as he would have expected.

"I don't know how you know about him," he started, "but let me let you in on a little secret: I was going to tell everyone anyway. So if you do, even though it wouldn't be nearly as effective as I would have hoped, it wouldn't hurt me. In fact: it would help me get your little magazine on _my_ side." Furious, Darren said:

"Oh yeah? Well how would your shareholders feel if they knew that their corporate executive officer was still working through an emo phase?" Seto suddenly felt as though a weight had dropped into his stomach.

"_What_?" Sensing that finally he had said something that made Kaiba nervous, Darren continued.

"I bet they'd be very interested to know why you never wear short sleeves."

"I don't know what you're talking about." But even as he said it, the leaden weight that had settled in his gut seemed to increase. Seto was positive that no one knew about the scars on his wrist except Alistair which meant that there was no way that this street punk could have found out about them unless Alistair had told him.

"Sure you do." Darren knew that if he revealed his source of information he'd probably ruin Alistair's relationship with Kaiba and maybe even get him into legal trouble, but the redhead had made his bed by choosing Kaiba, and now he was going to have to lie in it. "Alistair told me all about how he caught you cutting your wrist, and he also said that that wasn't the first time you'd done it." It was as though Darren had kicked him in the stomach. That couldn't _be_…Alistair wouldn't do that to him…This had to be some kind of trick!

Seto stood up abruptly, feeling suddenly sick to his stomach, and without a word he left the office, pushing past Uedo, Britney, and her father, ignoring their noises of surprise, and didn't stop walking until he'd reached the nearest bathroom which was mercifully empty and threw up in the toilet.

Alistair had been in on it from the beginning. He'd merely been pretending to be concerned when really he'd been feeding his friends information about him. How long had that been going on? Since before the redhead had gone to work for Robinhood? Since Seto had taken him in?

It suddenly occurred to him that this could have been Alistair's plan all along. He'd never forgiven Seto or stopped hating him. It had been his plan to gain Seto's trust so that he could take down Kaiba Corp and exact his revenge.

Thinking about all the nights that he'd slept in the same bed as someone who was trying to ruin him, about kissing him, and having sex with him caused Seto to throw up again. This was beyond betrayal, though he couldn't think of a stronger word. Had Alistair really been laughing at him the whole time?

As the minutes wore on, Seto's feelings of betrayal turned into red hot anger. How dare Alistair do this to him after everything he had done for him? Without Seto, Alistair would have had nothing. Without Seto he might even have died, so what right did he have to hate him so much?

He stood up, flushed the toilet, and washed his face at the sink. Alistair would pay for this, and pay dearly.

* * *

Alistair was sitting at the desktop in his room working through yet another practice calculus exam when he heard a car pull into the driveway. Getting up and looking out the window he saw with some surprise that it was Seto. _That was fast_, he thought to himself. He hadn't expected Seto to get home until much later.

He made his way to the foyer to meet Seto when he got there and almost bumped into Mokuba, who apparently had had the same idea. They exchanged a look, both hoping that the meeting had gone well.

Seto had spent his entire drive back to the mansion ignoring his vibrating cell phone and trying to figure out what to say to Alistair. He in no way wanted to give Alistair the satisfaction of knowing how deeply his treachery had cut Seto, not on an emotional level. As he got out of his car, still burning with anger, his cell phone buzzing in his pocket, he tried to compose himself. Any hope he had of that was shattered when he opened the door only to see Alistair and Mokuba standing there waiting for him.

As soon as Seto opened the door, it was clear to Alistair and Mokuba that something had gone wrong. When Seto laid eyes on Alistair's face, on the features he had become so accustomed to, features that were currently wearing a mask of concern, all of the cocky, unconcerned remarks he'd thought up on his drive were forgotten. All that remained were the feelings of complete and utter betrayal.

"What happened?" Mokuba asked. Seto ignored him. Looking directly into Alistair's silver eyes he said:

"I never thought that it would be possible for me to hate someone as much as I hated my step-father." It took every ounce of self-control he possessed to keep his voice from shaking. Mokuba's mouth fell open in surprise and confusion, but Alistair thought he knew what Seto was talking about. Clearly Britney had not kept her promise.

"I can explain," he started. Seto cut him off.

"Don't bother. I don't want to hear any more of your lies."

"Seto-,"

"You have no right to call me that!" Seto shouted, the sudden outburst causing Mokuba to jump. "I know who you see when you look at me! You were better off calling me Kaiba!"

"It was a mistake!" Alistair said loudly, angry that Seto wouldn't even give him the chance to explain.

"Oh I'm sure," Seto snapped sarcastically. "Just a misunderstanding, right?" He clenched his fists. "I take back what I said before. I hate you more than I ever hated him. He was a snake, so the hell he put me through was to be expected, but _you_, you had no reason to do this to me!" Mokuba had never seen his brother so upset before. "Congratulations: you win! You finally get the two things that you always wanted: you've fucked over my company, and you've fucked me! I hope you're satisfied." He started to walk past the redhead, loathe though he was to do so, but Alistair stood firm. "Get out of my way!"

"Listen to me," Alistair said, his voice rising in desperation. "I know what you think, but you're wrong!"

"Spare me! Your little boyfriend Darren Wiley told me everything. That's who you were with this weekend, wasn't it? Were the two of you at a club together celebrating, or did you just have a quiet evening at home laughing at what a fool you think I am? Is that what you've been doing the entire time you've been living here? Actually, I don't care.I am _not_ a fool, and you aren't going to pull one over on _me_ twice. Now _get out of my house_!"

"Seto!"

"_Get out_!" He shoved Alistair backwards and stalked past him, his trench coat, as always, swishing dramatically behind him. But unlike most times, this was no victory.

Hurt but angry, Alistair set his jaw and stormed out the open door, into the garage, and without so much as a jacket, he shoved his helmet on, aggressively turned the key that was always at the ready in the ignition, and took off down the driveway, slowing down just long enough for a startled Kanzo to open the gates.

Mokuba, feeling shell-shocked by the ferocity of the fight could only stand rooted to the spot until his cell phone started ringing. He didn't answer it, but the sudden noise was enough for him to unfreeze and chase after his brother.

"Seto!" he called, running up the stairs. "Seto!" He reached his brother's closed door and turned the handle, but it was locked. "Seto!" he called a third time, banging on the door. "What happened? Let me in!"

On the other side of the door, Seto was sitting on his bed with his head in his hands, his breathing shaky. He couldn't tell if he was trying to cry or trying not to. His cell phone started buzzing again. He yanked it out of his jacket pocket and hurled it against the wall where it shattered, the pieces falling to the floor. It was the perfect metaphor.

Mokuba heard the noise and redoubled his knocking.

"Seto!" He started to cry. "Seto…" He sank to the ground outside the door and hugged his knees, his tears falling onto his jeans. He was badly frightened. Nothing had ever had this effect on his brother before except the mind crush the pharaoh had inflicted on him after their first match. But that had been magic whereas this had been caused by something inside of Seto and that was what scared him. Even Gozaburo had not succeeded in causing the expression that Mokuba had just seen on his brother's face.

* * *

When he'd taken off, Alistair had had no plan in mind, no destination.

He wasn't sure who he was the angriest with: himself for having told Darren in the first place, Darren for telling Britney when he'd promised not to tell anyone, Britney for presumably telling Seto, or Seto for refusing to hear him out which probably would have resolved the whole thing.

He finally decided that while he himself was certainly the one to blame for setting the entire chain of events in motion, Seto was the one he was most angry with.

How dare he just throw away the last year like that? How could he believe that all this time it had all been a sham? Did he honestly believe that Alistair was that good of an actor after insisting for months that the redhead couldn't possibly lie without him knowing? Did he really think that he had never loved him? That he didn't love him still?

Suddenly he wasn't angry anymore, just sad. This was it; he was never going to be able to go back to how things were that morning when he had woken up with Seto's arms around him. His carelessness and Seto's hyper-sensitivity had ruined that.

Despite the gloom that settled over him, Alistair couldn't cry. For one thing, he was driving, and for another, it hadn't really sunken in yet. A part of him hoped that this would just be another one of their many fights that he'd stomped away from. Around dinnertime he'd drive back and without saying anything they'd look at each other and know that they'd each been forgiven.

He drove aimlessly around the city until he noticed that he was almost out of gas. He pulled into a gas station only to discover that he didn't have his wallet with him. Suddenly panicking, he dragged his bike off to the side to assess what he _did_ have.

Not much as it turned out. He had his helmet, his keys, his cell phone, and a couple of coins. Opening the compartment on his motorcycle, he saw that he also had his insurance and registration papers, but not his license, though he did have a small stash of money, enough to cover half a tank of gas. Cursing, he tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided to call Mokuba.

Mokuba, who was still sitting on the floor across the hall from Seto's door, waiting for him to come out, had finally called Roland back, telling him simply that Seto wasn't feeling well, a statement he could tell Roland didn't completely believe.

He was thinking about knocking on the door again when his cell phone started ringing. Wearily, he checked the caller ID and saw that it was Alistair. Suddenly angry, he answered.

"What do _you_ want?" he snapped.

"Can you just let me explain what happened?" Alistair pleaded.

"Fine."

"Months ago I used to hang out with this guy, Darren, before your brother and I were…before I cared about him, and I sometimes vented to Darren about certain things, but I didn't tell him it was Seto I was talking about; he figured that out on his own, and when he did I made him promise not to tell anyone. And that was it. I haven't even talked to him since before I left to work for Robinhood, I swear! I went to look for him this weekend to make sure he'd keep his promise, but I couldn't find him. I emailed Britney, his old roommate, and she swore she wouldn't tell, but obviously she did."

"I don't know…." Mokuba wasn't sure whether to believe the redhead's story or not. Alistair certainly knew how to act; he'd proven that by successfully pretending to be Pegasus. Could it be that he was lying so that he could…what? If Seto was right, wouldn't Alistair have already gotten what he wanted? Why would he continue to deny it? That hadn't been his style when he'd gone after Seto in the first place; he'd proudly declared his motivation once Seto had realized that it wasn't Pegasus he was dueling. That led Mokuba to believe that he was telling the truth.

"I'm not lying," Alistair insisted.

"He's really mad at you, Alistair," Mokuba said finally.

From behind his closed door, Seto heard Mokuba say Alistair's name. He worked up enough energy to get up off the bed and unlock the door. He wrenched it open.

"Seto!" Ignoring his brother, Seto snatched the teen's phone from him.

"Alistair!" he growled, his blue eyes blazing. "Don't you dare try to use Mokuba to get to me! I can't believe even you would sink that low. Never call here again! I don't want to see you, I don't want to hear from you! You're nothing but a snake, and if you ever have the misfortune of crossing me again I will dispose of you like one, do you understand me? You are the most despicable person I've ever had the misfortune to meet and I wish I'd left you on that plane to die!" He aggressively pressed the end button and tossed the phone to Mokuba before sweeping back into his room, slamming and locking the door behind him.

"Seto!" Mokuba started up banging on the door again. "I think he was telling the truth!"

But Seto couldn't bring himself to answer. That final outburst had sapped the last of his strength. He realized that he meant what he had said: he really did regret rescuing Alistair from the plane wreck. Now he had had a taste of happiness only to have it violently snatched away. It wasn't fair.

Whatever idiot had said that it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all was completely wrong. If he had never fallen in love with Alistair he wouldn't be here now. He'd be at work completely free of the acute pain that was now working its way into his chest.

He fell backwards onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. Gozaburo had been right all along: the only person you can trust is yourself. Friendship and love were only for those who hadn't figured that out yet.

Without warning, the events of the past year began playing like some horrible slide-show, gradually going faster and faster until he rolled over and pressed his face into the sheets to escape them.

Something began digging into his chest. It was his locket. As soon as he realized that that was what it was, it suddenly felt far too heavy. He sat up and with one yank, he broke the cord and threw the whole thing across the room where it landed on the floor next to the pieces of his cell phone.

The first tears landed on the crimson covers, covers that were still messy from when he and Alistair had slept between them and woken up together amongst them that morning. Seto stared at them until his vision started blurring. That was when he started crying for real. All of the feelings of betrayal he'd ever felt, all the abuse, all the hurt, all of it came bubbling to the surface and spilled over until he was sobbing into the mattress. He clutched onto the sheets as though that would somehow bring him comfort. Comfort akin to that which he'd provided to Mokuba and to Alistair when they'd been upset. Where was _his_ shoulder to cry on?

_You don't deserve it; you're worthless. Pathetic. No one cares about you. No one ever did. You're nothing more than the means everyone uses for their own ends_. _Were you really foolish enough to think he actually cared about you? That he loved you? Who could ever love __**you**__? There's nothing about you to love. You're a selfish, arrogant brat, and even if someone bothered to try to dig deeper than that all they'd find is your twisted and ugly soul, broken into so many pieces it'd be almost impossible to put it back together. _

Dimly, he registered that his brother was knocking on the door and calling out for him, but he couldn't move except to draw raggedy breaths.

If he'd been frightened before, Mokuba was terrified now. He'd never heard Seto crying before. His brother had always seemed above anything or anyone being able to hurt him.

"Seto! Seto! Let me in, _please_!"

"What's going on?" Trudy rounded the corner.

When she'd heard Seto and Alistair fighting, she'd ignored it like she always did, but when she'd gone to let the carpet cleaners in and heard Mokuba yelling upstairs, she'd instructed them to go ahead and start in the living room and run up the stairs.

"It's Seto," Mokuba wept as Trudy pulled the teen into her arms. "He won't come out of his room!" She could see that Mokuba was badly shaken, but she wasn't sure why since it was far from the first time that Seto and Alistair had gotten into a yelling match.

"I'll have a talk with both of them once Alistair gets back," she promised, soothingly rubbing Mokuba's back. She frowned. She was really becoming fed up with what they kept putting the younger Kaiba through. He wasn't a child anymore, but in her opinion he was still far too young to have to bear witness to his older brother's many domestic disputes.

"He's not coming back," Mokuba said morosely, hiccupping slightly. "Seto told him he's not allowed to come back." Her frown deepened. She let go of Mokuba and turned to her employers closed door. Knocking crisply several times she said:

"Come out here this instant! You can fire me or sue me or whatever you please, but you are not going to put this child through this again, do you hear me? It's not fair. Either you and Alistair keep your spats to yourselves, or reevaluate your relationship, because I can't stand for you to traumatize Mokuba like this! The two of you are setting a horrible example for your brother-the one you swore you would take care of! I don't care how much money you make or how many theme parks you open; throwing things around and yelling at someone that you're standing a foot in front of is a pretty miserable way for a role model to behave!"

When Seto didn't respond, she turned back to Mokuba.

"I see that he'd rather sulk than take responsibility for this, so come on; let's leave him to it. I'll go tell Miss Carmichael that her services won't be necessary today and then you and I are going out. I've been meaning to go to that craft shop downtown for a while now anyway; I want to make a wind chime and I called the owner who says they have glass pieces that would be perfect." She steered the raven-haired boy down the stairs, glancing over her shoulder as he reluctantly followed her lead. Truth be told: as much as she was annoyed by the situation, she was also a bit worried about Seto who she had never known to lock himself in his room. Shut the door certainly, but never lock it or blatantly ignore his brother like that. If he still hadn't come out by the time she and Mokuba got back she resolved to ask George where the skeleton key was to make sure that he was alright.

* * *

**Author's Note:** We have officially entered the 'hurt' section of this 'hurt/comfort' fic, so be warned that things will be taking a rather dark turn, particularly on Seto's end for the next few chapters.

This is mostly based on my own headcanon, but I feel like for the most part his arrogance is a front to cover up his self-loathing which is the result of being psychologically abused by Gozaburo, and thinking that he's been betrayed by one of the only people he trusts is just the straw that broke the camel's back.


	13. The Show Must Go On

**Disclaimer:** I own all of Season 4 on DVD and a lurid amount of cards and merch, but sadly, not the rights to the actual show.

* * *

_"The tricks were hard to catch  
But now I see right through  
No more hurting me  
No more loving you_

_A fantastic debut  
Taking part in your masquerade  
I starred as the fool  
And while the music played  
I gave my heart to you  
Boy, how was I confused  
I was only being used."_

_Fell for the Enemy, _Chris Crocker

**Chapter 13**

After using the little bit of cash that he had on gas, Alistair tried to figure out what to do. Ultimately he'd have to get into contact with Trudy so that he could get Sewell and his wallet and maybe some of his other things, but he'd have to wait until at least the next day or else risk her getting in trouble with Seto for having helped him which meant he needed to find a place to stay for the night.

He wouldn't have had a problem just sleeping on a park bench except that if he got arrested he'd be in trouble given that he had no kind of ID and no one to bail him out. Plus, if they ran his name through the system there was a good chance they'd realize that his information was faked. The last thing he wanted to happen now that he was finally forming some semblance of a normal life in Domino was get deported.

There was no way in hell he was going to go to Darren or Britney for help which didn't leave too many options. He called Moira, but she and her family were on vacation in Los Angeles visiting friends for the holidays and were therefore unable to offer him a place to crash, leaving him with only one other person he could call unless he wanted to spend the night at Zoe's (which he most certainly did not).

As he dialed Ryou's number he tried not to think about any of the many reasons why it was very bad idea.

"Hello?" Ryou said, picking up the phone, surprised to be hearing from Alistair again so soon.

"Hey." Alistair's voice sounded strained. "You don't have to feel obligated, but if it wouldn't be too much trouble could I possibly sleep on your couch or your floor or something tonight?"

"Is something the matter?" Ryou asked in concern. "I mean, of course you can, but…"

"If you don't mind I don't really want to talk about it right now."

"No, that's fine. Do you want to come over now?"

"Only if that wouldn't mess up your day."

"Not at all." Ryou relayed his address and some simple directions which Alistair followed to a dodgy looking apartment complex on the fringes of the projects that had begun popping up on the outskirts of Domino. Ryou met him at the door to show him where he could park his motorcycle.

"It's not very nice," Ryou said apologetically as they walked back to the front of the building. "But you're welcome to stay as long as you like."

"Thank you," Alistair replied gratefully.

Ryou took him up to his apartment on the fourth floor.

"It's a bit of a mess, so I'm sorry about that. Whenever I play video games I sort of lose track of my sense of cleanliness."

The apartment was as small as the Kaiba mansion was big and consisted of a kitchenette, a bedroom, a tiny bathroom, and a small, cramped living room. A large, old fashioned TV took up most of one corner and was currently displaying a paused video game. On the floor were a huge beanbag pillow and a half eaten bag of chips and a bowl of salsa.

"Are you hungry?" Even though he was painfully curious to know what had brought Alistair there, the redhead had said he didn't want to talk about it, and Ryou wasn't about to press him.

"A little."

"You're more than welcome to share that with me." Ryou indicated the bag of chips.

"Sure." Alistair sat down on the floor and dipped a chip in the salsa. "What are you playing?" Ryou returned to his seat on the beanbag chair.

"It's a series called _Silent Hill_; this is the second one. They're really quite creepy, but even after everything that happened with the spirit I still like them."

For the next two hours Alistair listened to Ryou explain the premise of the series and watched him play. By the time they finished their snack, Alistair decided to reveal to Ryou why he was there.

"Seto and I broke up," he said, apropos of nothing as Ryou got up to throw the empty chip bag away.

"I'm sorry," Ryou, who had suspected as much, replied sincerely. He liked Alistair and therefore took no pleasure in the news even though it by all accounts left him free to pursue the redhead if he wanted to.

Saying it out loud made it real to Alistair, which it hadn't been before. Up until he'd called Mokuba only to have Seto snatch the phone from him, he'd thought that maybe, just maybe, the situation was salvageable. Seto had made it clear that that would not be the case. No matter how ugly their arguments got, the brunette had never said he regretted saving him before.

He started to cry, and once he started it took him fifteen minutes to stop. Ryou, without saying a word, sat beside him on the floor and put a comforting hand on his back. By the time he was able to pull himself together, Alistair's head had found its way to Ryou's shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he apologized, sitting up and wiping the tears off his face. "I didn't think that would happen." He pulled himself together by replacing the feelings of heartbreak with feelings of anger.

"You cared about him; of course you're going to be upset."

"It's just so stupid! I didn't even do what he thinks I did!"

"Then maybe you can explain it to him." But Ryou wasn't sure he believed that himself; Kaiba wasn't the kind of person who seemed to be interested in listening to what anyone else had to say. Alistair rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, right. Whatever, it's probably better this way. If he can turn on me this easily then I'm better off knowing that sooner rather than later…I really am sorry for putting all of this on you." Ryou shook his head.

"Not at all. Although…Can I ask you why you called _me_? We just met."

"I don't really have that many friends that I could ask. It's mostly just been me, Seto, Mokuba, and all the people that work at the mansion with the exception of my coworkers at the library, but I'm not really friends with them. I didn't want it to be that way, but because I didn't do anything to stop it, my life sort of revolved around Seto. I became anti-social because he is, not necessarily because I wanted to be. I'm not really a people person, so I wasn't _craving_ friends, but what I didn't realize was that if this happened, I'd have nowhere to go, just like last time…" Ryou's brown eyes filled with concern.

"Do you really have nowhere to go? Because maybe if you call the housing office at the university they can do something to help you. It's sort of last minute, but they might still have something available. But wait: do you even have any money?"

"I do. Not a lot since most of it went to paying tuition for this semester, but enough that I could probably rent a place like this. I'll have to drop a class or two and only study part-time this semester in order to work longer hours, but it's doable."

"I don't know how you'd feel about this, but you could always stay here. It's small, but it's bigger than a regular dorm room. The rent is really cheap already, and if we split it, it would be even cheaper…" He trailed off, hoping that Alistair didn't take his offer the wrong way. Alistair looked at him in surprise.

"That's really generous of you, but you don't have to do that; letting me stay here even just one night is enough."

"If you don't want to that's ok, but don't say no just because you think I'll regret asking. The truth is that I'm quite short on money too and I was already thinking of looking for a roommate, but I wasn't sure how to go about doing that since technically only one person is supposed to live here. Not that that would be a problem," he added quickly. "I've only ever met my landlord once, and that was when I signed the lease. I got the impression that as long as you pay your rent on time he doesn't care what you do."

"You're serious?"

"Quite. I know it might seem strange to ask you to move in when we've only just met, but I mean, that's how it works on campus as well, and there you don't get any say in who you room with."

"I tell you what: how about I stay for a week, and if we don't drive each other crazy by then, then we can make it official. Well, not really, but you get the idea. And even if we decide not to, if you tell me how much rent is for a month, I'll pay you half of seven days worth." He suddenly remembered Sewell. "Oh, but I have a cat, I don't know how you feel about that…"

"A cat?" Ryou's eyes lit up. "I've never had a cat, but I always wanted one. What's his or her name?"

"I named her Sewell after the author of _Black Beauty_. She's well behaved, and she won't scratch the furniture or anything, but she's really skittish. She was a stray that I found outside a restaurant downtown and when I took her to the vet, he told me that he was fairly certain she'd been abused by her previous owners."

"Poor thing," Ryou said softly. "People can be so cruel." He of course was thinking of all of the horrible things the spirit of the Ring had done without any kind of remorse. "Is she still at Kaiba's?" Alistair nodded.

"That and everything else I own. I wouldn't really care except that my wallet's there too, and all of my legal documents. I could survive without all the other stuff, but I _need_ those papers…"

"You'll get them. And I can't wait to meet Sewell!" He smiled at the thought of a cat wandering around the apartment, sleeping on the beanbag chair, or perched on the window ledge. Mostly though, he was excited about the prospect of not being alone anymore.

Ryou, unlike Alistair or Kaiba, was not a loner by choice. He hated being alone, but no one seemed to want to be around him once they found out about his 'psychotic break' except for Yugi, Joey, Tristain, and Téa, but that was only because they knew the real story. He knew he could have asked one of them to move in with him, but every time he'd thought about it, he'd changed his mind, not wanting to put any of them on the spot when he knew that he still sometimes made them uncomfortable.

After that, Ryou gave Alistair a small tour of the apartment, explaining its little quirks, such as the upper right hand burner on the stove that didn't work as well as the others, the water in the shower that took just over five minutes to heat up, and the sometimes faulty air conditioner in the bedroom.

The walls of Ryou's tiny bedroom were covered with video game posters, several of which Alistair recognized from _Silent Hill _and one that was a blow-up of the art from the Change of Heart Duel Monsters card. A small bookshelf was lined with games as well as the books that Alistair had lent him.

"You really like video games, huh?"

"Is that obvious? If I could I'd love to work in video game design."

"I thought you had no idea what you wanted to study."

"Yes, that was a bit of a lie I suppose. I'd _like_ to study game design, but, I don't know. If I turned out to be no good at it…I'd feel like such a failure. And even if I _am_ good at it, who would hire me? You may be accepting of my less than stellar past, but not everyone is so open minded." He sighed but quickly plastered a smile back on his face. "A trouble for another day. Feel free to stay here, but I have to go shopping now that there are two of us for dinner."

"I'll come with you. And I can help you cook too, but only if you tell me what to do; the only thing I can make is the kind of soup where you just throw anything edible you can find into a pot of boiling water." Ryou laughed.

"I've made that myself on occasion."

Due to the constant company of Ryou and the distractions of his TV, Alistair was able to keep himself together until two in the morning when they finally decided to call it a night.

"I can sleep on the floor if you want," Ryou offered awkwardly, realizing that Alistair might not want to share a bed with him.

"No, it's fine; I can. It's your place and your bed. Anyway, I think I'll take a shower first if that's ok."

"Of course. The hair dryer is in the top drawer of the cabinet if you want to use it. I know I have to or else my hair will never dry."

"Thanks."

After he turned the water in the slightly stained shower on and stood underneath it, he was unable to repress his memories from the day any longer and tears began leaking from his eyes again. It had never occurred to him that there would ever be a fight that would definitively end things between them. They had always kissed and made up. _Always_. He knew this had been different though. All of their other fights had revolved around politics or math or Seto's brazen disrespect towards his employees, this time the subject matter had been very personal.

Alistair sorely wished that he hadn't allowed anger to get the better of him. If he would have stayed calm he could have gone after Seto and tried to reason with him, but instead he'd left in a rage and now the situation was unsalvageable, at least on his end. _He_ couldn't just march up to the Kaiba mansion or Kaiba Corp headquarters and demand that Seto talk to him, though Seto was more than capable of hunting _him_ down if he wanted to. But would he?

Given that it had taken the brunette years to admit that magic (which had been appearing in his life left and right) was real, how long would it take for him to believe that Alistair wasn't lying? A decade? And how long was he, Alistair, willing to wait?

Just the other day he'd called Seto the love of his life, had said he could never imagine being with anyone else. Had that really been true? And if so, did that mean that he'd never find anyone to make him happy again? Would he revert to the broken wanderer he'd been before without Seto there to give his life meaning? Surely fate couldn't be so cruel.

Through the thin wall, Ryou could hear Alistair crying and his heart went out to him, though he felt there was really very little he could do to help his new friend.

Eventually Alistair walked back out of the bathroom. Seeing that Ryou was still awake he said:

"I hope I didn't keep you up."

"No, no, of course not." Ryou sat up in the small bed, his expression one of concern. "Are you alright?" Alistair shrugged and sat next to him on the mattress.

"I have to be. He dictated how I felt for seven, almost eight years; I'm not going to go back to that again. I just want my own life!" He hung his head and Ryou put a hand on his shoulder.

"I understand." Alistair turned to him, meeting the snowy-haired Brit's amber eyes. Ryou wasn't like Seto; he understood. He knew what it was like to have everything pulled out from under you, to never be able to make decisions for yourself, to be shunned, to be an outcast, and he therefore grasped the true value of friendship and love after having been denied both for so long.

If he couldn't be with Seto, maybe Ryou could make him happy.

Ryou anticipated the kiss a second before Alistair made to plant it on him and in that split-second he made the choice to move out of the way.

"You don't really want to do that," Ryou said kindly. "You're just upset. You'd regret it tomorrow."

"But you wouldn't." Ryou blushed.

"It's a bad idea. You and Kaiba just broke up today. What if he calls you tomorrow and asks for you back? Besides, if we want to live together, we can't do this."

"Tomorrow," Alistair scoffed. "When I worked for Dartz every waking minute was spent working for tomorrow. When today was tomorrow I assumed I'd be spending it with him, but I'm not. I'm _sick_ of always focusing on the future. The world could end tomorrow for all we know, so why not just do what we want to right now?"

"Yes, but _why_ do you want to? Because you like me, or because you miss him? I've had quite enough of being used thank you very much." For the first time Ryou sounded annoyed. When Alistair didn't answer, he rolled his eyes and lay back down. "Let's just go to sleep. And don't think of sleeping on the floor; there's more than enough room for both of us on this bed."

Chagrined, Alistair lay down beside him. The sheets smelled of flowery fabric softener, very unlike the musky cologne that Trudy soaked Seto's sheets with, and they were slightly frayed, but soft enough. Still, it took him the better part of an hour to fall asleep.

* * *

By the next day everyone at the Kaiba mansion was extremely worried about Seto who still hadn't come out of his room, though Trudy had taken the master key and unlocked the door, informing the shadowy figure lying in the dark on the bed that she was going to bring him food and if he didn't eat it she'd be forced to call the hospital so they could send someone to force-feed him.

The part of his brain still connected to the real world registered what she said, but he didn't answer, though he did pick at the food that she brought up on a tray in case she wasn't bluffing about the hospital. It was utterly tasteless and as soon as he was finished eating he rolled over and went back to sleep.

Mokuba took it upon himself to cancel his classes so that he could sit beside his brother on the bed, but Seto never looked at him in a way that led Mokuba to believe he even knew he was there; his normally piercing blue eyes were vacant and flat.

"Say something," he pleaded, lightly shaking the brunette's shoulder. "Please!" He thought about calling Alistair. Maybe the redhead could do something. But he wasn't completely sure what to believe about the fight that had caused his brother to fall into a comatose state. Had Alistair done what Seto accused him of, namely betraying him, or not? Seto seemed so sure that he was right, but Alistair had continued to refute it and his denial had seemed sincere.

It was exactly what Mokuba had been afraid of. By letting his guard down, Seto had left himself in an extremely vulnerable position. The younger Kaiba knew exactly how sensitive his brother was beneath the tough façade, and had borne witness to Seto baring this soft side to Alistair who had seemingly stabbed him in it.

He lay beside his brother and hugged his prone form. _Please get better. I can't live without you. _

Seto knew he ought to say something, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He had no strength anymore, no will, just emptiness. The thoughts that swirled through his mind always circled back to a single question: why? What had he done to deserve all that he had suffered? Had losing his parents not been enough? Surely that was more than enough for any person to bear. Yet, fate had had far more in store for him.

When he'd tried to make the best of the lot he'd been given by being adopted by someone who by all accounts should have been in the perfect position to set both him and his brother up for life, that had backfired and he'd been put through four years of hell. But he'd survived a second time and had made the best of things yet again, turning the Kaiba name around and fulfilling his childhood dream of building a theme park for orphans.

Then he'd found Alistair and he'd thought that finally the Gods (if in fact there were any) had deigned to smile favorably on him for once. But no, it was merely history repeating itself for a third time. Well, he'd learned his lesson.

_I give up._

There was no point in getting up only to be knocked down again so he'd just as soon stay down.

* * *

It took three days for Alistair to convince Trudy that he was being truthful and had not intentionally hurt Seto. She told him how distraught the CEO was and asked Alistair to come with her back to the mansion to try to reason with him when the pair met for a tea in the city, but Alistair refused.

"_If he can turn on me this easily, he clearly never trusted me, so why should I try to convince him now? Let him think what he wants; his paranoia isn't my problem anymore; he made that pretty clear." _

"_You don't understand Alistair. He's shut himself up in his room and he won't come out. He's barely eating, he's-." _

"_I don't care. He didn't want to listen to what I had to say, so he can suffer the consequences. I'm through trying to protect him from himself." _

He'd taken the two bags that Trudy had packed of his clothes and a carrier holding a very unhappy Sewell, paid for the drinks, and left the teashop to wait for Ryou outside.

Several minutes later a small blue car, driven by an even smaller, spiky-haired young man pulled up to the curb.

Ryou had filled Yugi in on his new roommate and asked if he could help the two of them get Alistair's things to his apartment. Yugi had been more than a little surprised to hear the news and again wondered what was keeping Alistair hanging around town, but he'd agreed to help.

Ryou climbed out of the passenger seat.

"Is this Sewell?" he asked, dropping to his knees on the pavement to peer in at her. She hissed at him and retreated to the very back of the carrier.

"She's not too happy about being in there."

"I don't blame her. I hope she feels better once we let her out." The two loaded the bags into the trunk before piling into the car, Alistair riding in the back with Sewell's carrier on his lap.

"Thanks for the ride," he said to Yugi, slightly embarrassed given how he'd fled from the champion duelist the last time they'd met.

"No problem. Any friend of Bakura's is a friend of mine." Alistair wasn't sure he quite believed that; something in Yugi's gaze still seemed wary.

* * *

Mokuba had been unsuccessful in getting Seto to go to the press conference that they'd scheduled for that afternoon and had been forced to take his place, stating to the cameras that his brother was very ill and therefore unable to attend.

The entire event turned out to be more or less pointless. Though Mokuba held his own, he lacked Seto's charisma, and Britney had been so unnerved by what had happened at the meeting that Monday and was so angry that Darren had done exactly what he'd promised not to do, that her questions weren't nearly as pointed as she'd planned; she felt that they'd made the Kaibas suffer enough already; there was no need to drag it out any more. Both parties left feeling relieved that the affair was over.

Mokuba had little time to relax however, because as soon as the meeting was finished he had to return to KC headquarters to act as CEO in Seto's stead which turned out to be easier said than done, though between himself and Roland, the news that Seto Kaiba was out of commission indefinitely stayed contained. As far as most people knew the elder Kaiba was still calling the shots and could return at any moment, healthy and ready to fire anyone who had slacked off in his absence.

After this went on for over a week however, Mokuba started to wonder just how long he could keep the charade up. Eventually either someone would figure out that Seto was MIA or he'd be forced to tell. And what if Seto didn't recover?

Every day he expected to wake up and find Seto sitting in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in one hand and the newspaper in the other, but instead, _he'd_ been the one forced to get up at the crack of dawn and down the liquid caffeine in order to stay awake through each ten to twelve hour workday.

By the following Wednesday morning he was mentally and physically exhausted and he wasn't even pulling as many hours as Seto normally did.

Trudy couldn't help but take notice and she did her best to talk the teen out of working so hard.

"_I have to,"_ he'd told her tiredly on Friday morning.

"_You look like a raccoon, Mokuba. Have you slept at all this week?_"

"_It doesn't feel like it. But I have to do this. Kaiba Corp doesn't run itself and I have a lot of catching up to do. It's my own fault; I should have been paying attention all along and I never did." _

After Mokuba had gone into the office, Trudy marched upstairs to chastise Seto, hoping that by berating him she'd illicit some kind of a response from him.

He was lying in bed like he'd been doing since the previous Monday afternoon when she swung the door open and flicked the overhead light on. He scrunched his eyes up against the sudden brightness but otherwise didn't acknowledge her presence.

"Your brother, your _fifteen year old_ brother, just left this house looking like he hasn't slept in days to run the company that _you_ have suddenly decided to abandon. I don't care _what_ you think Alistair did to you; you have no right to put Mokuba through this! Or me for that matter. Do you have any idea how hard it is for us to see you like this?"

"Turn the light off," he said finally, his voice raspy from disuse. "And leave me alone."

"I'll call the hospital if you don't stop this nonsense. I mean it. And not that you even care about my opinion, but I don't believe that he did what you think he did. I spoke to him last week and he swears up and down that he didn't betray you."

"He's lying,"Seto responded flatly. Darren could only have found out about the cutting from Alistair telling him directly, therefore Alistair had told him, simple as that. "And don't you dare call the hospital."

With that said he rolled over so that his back was to her and tried to go back to sleep, not that sleeping brought him peace, but it was all he had the energy for aside from dragging himself to the bathroom and occasionally pacing back and forth across the room, analyzing everything he could remember of the last year, trying to pinpoint the exact moment that Alistair had hatched his plan.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Since this is now a post-canon fic and a sequel, I feel a little more at liberty to have the characters do things that are 'OOC', however, I am still striving to stay true to their canon personalities while working with their back stories which is why I think that Seto, under these circumstances would completely shut down; Alistair seemingly betraying him the final nail in his coffin of self-loathing.

Not gonna lie, Ryou is a hard character to write, but I'm trying to do him justice since he's such a sweetheart, but not nearly as frail as he's often portrayed in fanfiction.


	14. Moving On

**Disclaimer:** I've said it before and I'll say it again; were I to own Yu-Gi-Oh! it would not be marketed as a children's show. Just saying.

* * *

_"I can't seem to say good-bye  
Though I've tried a million times  
The more I learn, the less I know  
About the art of letting go_

_For all we feel, and all we know  
It's not easy letting go."_

_~The Art of Letting Go, _Pat Benatar

**Chapter 14**

The sting of his bad split with Seto was still fresh, but Alistair was starting to come to terms with it by the time he'd been living with Ryou for a week. He was a survivor, always had been, and knew that it would not do to dwell on the hurt after having experienced the horror of his brother's death eating away at him for so long. Being around Ryou helped.

He knew that it was a bad idea to pursue the Brit for the very reason Ryou had stated himself: that he was merely trying to find an easy way to get over Seto, namely focusing his attention on someone else.

But Alistair wasn't convinced that that was completely true because he really did like Ryou. He liked his sweetness and how it juxtaposed with his love of horror movies and video games and all things occult, admired his selflessness and inner strength, his authenticity. He liked the way that Ryou blushed when he was paid a compliment, pink staining his otherwise pale cheeks, and how his feathery white hair framed his face and constantly fell into his bright tawny eyes.

He also liked how normal life with Ryou was, how ordinary. No mansion, no limo, no absurdly overcomplicated security system, and no secrets, just two roommates starting college and trying to figure out career plans like thousands of other people all over the world.

"I'm completely knackered," Ryou declared when he arrived home from class that evening and flopped down next to Alistair on the bed where he'd been working through yet another calculus test on Ryou's laptop.

One of the things Alistair had learned early on was to expect not to always understand what Ryou was talking about due to a lack of familiarity with British slang given that Trudy never used it. 'Knackered' though was one he had quickly become accustomed to.

"Maybe you wouldn't be so tired if you didn't stay up until three in the morning playing video games." Ryou childishly stuck his tongue out at him.

"It's not like I do it on purpose; I just sort of lose track of time…"

"I kept telling you what time it was and you kept saying that you'd stop in ten minutes."

"Did you really? I don't even remember that."

"Are you sure you're not wearing the Millennium Ring?" Alistair teased.

"God I hope not; I can't afford to go through that again."

Ryou, unlike either Alistair or Seto whose hardships were still very touchy subjects, liked his ordeal with the Spirit to be made light of because he felt it helped him get past it, which he'd explained to Alistair after Yugi had left the day the redhead had officially moved in. He'd complained about how Yugi and his friends always danced around the issue with they hung out with him.

"_I hate it,"_ he'd said, _"because I know they're all thinking about it. But instead of just coming right out and saying so, they try to act like it never happened."_

"What books did you talk about in your class today?"

"_Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ and _Treasure Island_. Since they're both by Robert Louis Stevenson we spent a lot of the day comparing the two which I thought was rather silly. Talking about the actual stories is so much more fun and interesting.

I really enjoyed _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ for probably obvious reasons, but my professor really embarrassed me during our class discussion by bringing up something that I'd mentioned to him over our lunch break about how I feel bad for Dr. Jekyll. He made me restate what I'd said and let me go on about it for almost five minutes only to explain to everyone that by feeling that way I proved how much I don't understand Dr. Jekyll's character.

I don't see how a feeling about a book _can_ be wrong though; stories mean different things to different people based on each person's life experiences. But it wasn't like I could tell him that I felt that way because I too know what it feels like to have a demon inside of you that takes you over and does terrible things, so I had to just sit there feeling like an idiot until he finally moved on to something else."

"If it would have been me I would have said that to him. Told him that I think he's wrong about there being a 'correct' interpretation."

"He's my professor though; I can't just criticize him like that, not if I want him to give me a good grade."

"Maybe, but if you would have stood up for yourself you might have been able to convince him that you were right." Ryou shrugged.

"I'm not as bold as you are when it comes to that kind of thing." He was referring to an incident that had occurred on Sunday night when the two had gone to the store to buy food for the week.

On their way out, Ryou had paused to try to win a chibi zombie plushy from a machine near the exit. Having achieved his goal he'd triumphantly held up the toy, causing several passing teenage boys to snicker. Without missing a beat, Alistair had rounded on them.

"_I don't know what you're laughing at when you probably couldn't win the game no matter how hard you tried." _It was the kind of thing Joey would have done had he been there.

"Yeah, well, being bold isn't always the best idea…" He could think of plenty of fights with Seto that could have been easily avoided if only he hadn't been so determined to prove to the brunette that he wasn't the only one who could verbally spar.

Ryou suddenly noticed the website that Alistair had pulled up on the screen.

"What are you working on?" he asked.

"Oh. It's calculus. I have to take a class this semester and I'm trying to play catch-up before it starts. I never really learned any of this stuff," Alistair admitted ruefully.

"Do you want any help? I'm pretty good at math."

"Really? Yeah, sure, thanks."

"No problem." Just then Ryou's stomach growled loudly. "Hmm, maybe I should eat something first."

"There's frozen pizza in the freezer. I had one earlier and I almost made you one too, but I thought you'd rather make bangers and mash or something."

"Do you even know what bangers and mash is?" Ryou asked good-naturedly, getting up to make himself a salad.

"Not a clue."

As soon as Ryou began moving things around in the kitchen, Sewell leapt off her perch on the windowsill and started twining herself around his legs, purring. Much like Trudy, Ryou had won Sewell over through the use of food.

"Hang on," he laughed. "I haven't even opened the tuna yet." The minute he did open the container she began mewing loudly and trying to jump up on the counter, but she was too small to jump high enough.

He tipped the tuna juice into a bowl and set it on the ground for her where she quickly lapped it up. He put the finishing touches on his simple salad of lettuce, tuna, and tomato, pinched a small piece of tuna off for the cat and walked back into the bedroom, Sewell hot on his heels.

"You spoil her," Alistair pointed out as Ryou dropped the piece of fish for the calico.

"How could anyone not? She's so cute." He reached down and scratched her behind her ears.

"Seto couldn't stand her. He never liked her which she must have known because when we tried to have her sleep with us she attacked his feet. That was pretty much the last straw." At the mention of Kaiba, Ryou bit his lip. Every time the CEO was brought up it was another reminder to him of why it was that he and Alistair couldn't pursue anything. Alistair noticed Ryou's troubled expression, correctly guessed its source and hastily changed the subject. "I don't suppose you're still willing to help me with this, are you?"

* * *

While Ryou ate his dinner and Sewell played at their feet, he tried to teach Alistair a few tricks to help him more quickly and efficiently solve his calculus problems.

"Is it starting to make sense?" he asked after a half an hour.

"Definitely. Thanks."

"No problem. It's just as well that I brush up on that. It may never matter again, but then again, maybe someone else will need help that I'll only be able to provide if I keep my skills sharp."

"Thank you for not making me feel stupid."

"Why would I? It's not your fault you don't understand it; you never learned it. And even if you had, if you don't get it that doesn't make you stupid. 'Stupid' is a horrible thing to call someone."

"You'd be a good teacher."

"Maybe. But I wouldn't have any idea how to get a bunch of kids to be quiet or break up fights or anything like that."

"A tutor then. There are plenty of people who would pay you a lot of money to tutor their kids." He was thinking of the fat paychecks Mokuba's tutors surely received.

"Hmm…perhaps. But I do have a rather busy schedule; it'd be hard to find time to tutor kids in between all of the other social obligations I have."

"You mean like watching movies and playing games?"

"And going on dates and attending parties and…I don't know…going clubbing. Things like that take up a lot of time you know."

"Oh certainly. I go to so many parties that sometimes I have to survive for weeks at a time on caffeine alone."

"We are utterly ridiculous," Ryou said, laughing. "If we don't begin re-evaluating our lifestyle immediately we're going to die of socialite-itis."

Soon thereafter, Ryou took some clothes into the bathroom with him so that he could change into something more comfortable than the jeans and button up he had on.

He emerged a minute later wearing a pair of loose-fitting pajama pants with game controllers on them and an oversized plain white t-shirt that did nothing to disguise his slender frame. He scooped his empty salad bowl off the bed and walked out to the kitchen to wash it, leaving Alistair staring after him.

Alistair knew perfectly well that he was far from over Seto, who continued to invade his dreams, but he was also aware that just as he didn't plan on waiting around for Seto to take him back, Ryou had no plans to wait for _him_ to get over Seto. Eventually he would find someone else and Alistair would have missed his chance.

Ryou returned from the kitchen.

"I don't know about you, but I'm in the mood to slaughter some zombies." He pretended to crack his knuckles in anticipation. "What?" he added when Alistair didn't come back with some remark about him having class in the morning.

"Do you remember what you told me the first night I was here? About not wanting to be used anymore? I've been thinking about it a lot. Am I over him? No, not by a long shot, but I can't say I'm surprised. I stalked him for seven years. He was all I thought about. Then I fell in love with him and lived with him and slept in the same bed as him every night for almost a year. I don't know that I'll _ever_ be completely over him, but does that mean that I don't deserve to try to be happy with someone else?

I've been sitting here debating whether or not to tell you this— and maybe I shouldn't have, but I like you a lot and I really want to kiss you." He looked up from the spot he'd been staring at; just to the left of where Ryou was standing, and met his gaze.

Ryou didn't know what to say. No one had ever said anything like that to him before. Sure he occasionally got hit on, but always in a very crude, base way, and not by anyone he cared to get involved with. He liked Alistair—a lot—but he was wary. Seto Kaiba was not a person he was comfortable being compared to. He wasn't self-assured, rich, handsome, or clever like Kaiba was; how could he possibly hope to compete?

"I like you too," he said finally. "But I don't know…" He bit his lower lip and mulled it over some more.

Alistair stood up and joined Ryou in the doorway. Eyes wide, Ryou stood perfectly still, knowing that if Alistair were to try to kiss him again, he wouldn't stop him this time. Alistair slowly reached out to brush the Brit's overgrown bangs out of his eyes and let his hand trail down the side of his face and torso, coming to rest on his narrow waist. Just as slowly he leaned in and brushed his lips against Ryou's.

Though the Spirit of the Ring had had no reservations when it came to using his host's body in ways that made Ryou cringe even now, he himself had never kissed anyone before. It felt wonderful to be wanted by someone, and the pressure of Alistair's mouth against his caused a swooping sensation in his stomach that he'd been afraid he'd only ever read about.

Kissing Ryou was a completely different experience from kissing Seto. Where Seto was rough, Ryou was gentle, where Seto seemed to be carved from marble, Ryou was soft, though Alistair knew him to be far from fragile.

Ryou wrapped his arms around Alistair's neck as they continued to kiss, and it occurred to the redhead that unlike with Seto, here _he_ would be the one whose direction was followed, though he wasn't sure how far Ryou would want to go.

He gently pushed the Brit up against the doorframe and when the gesture wasn't met with protest, tilted Ryou's head to the side and began kissing along the racing pulse in his neck. Ryou sighed in pleasure and closed his eyes after tentatively twining his fingers into Alistair's hair.

In what was supposed to have been one swift motion, Alistair placed his hands on Ryou's thighs and picked him up with a small grunt. It wasn't nearly as easy as Seto always made it seem, but he managed to carry Ryou over to the bed before they both fell onto it with Alistair on top. At this point he and Seto would have started ripping each other's clothes off, but in light of the Brit's obvious innocence, he decided that a different approach would be more appropriate.

"Tell me if I do something you don't like, ok?" he said, looking down at Ryou whose long white hair had flayed out over the pillow. Ryou was a bit embarrassed by the statement, knowing that Alistair was only saying so on account of _his_ inexperience. Still, he nodded.

"I will. But you have to promise that you won't think I'm easy." Ryou's voice was coy.

"Of course I don't think that." He leaned down to kiss him again, sliding his hand up the side of Ryou's thin t-shirt as he did so.

Not long thereafter, the Brit's shirt lay crumpled on the floor. Ryou's skin was so pale that in the moonlight it practically glowed. And it was perfectly flawless save for a jagged scar on his left bicep.

"What happened?" Alistair asked, tracing the spot with his fingertip. Ryou, who was very self-conscious when it came to the ugly disfigurement, told Alistair the story of how the Spirit, in an attempt to aide Marik Ishtar, had stabbed himself (and Ryou by default) in the arm with a piece of broken glass. He ended the story by covering the scar with his hand, saying:

"Don't look at it; it's ugly."

"If it makes you uncomfortable, I won't. But you shouldn't be embarrassed by it."

"Every time I look in the mirror and see that scar, it reminds me of _him_. I can't even begin to explain to you what it was like having him in my head for so long. Even when I was me I could feel him lurking in my mind, waiting to take over again. Fighting him was even worse; it left me so drained and hopeless. It got to the point where all I wanted to do was die so I didn't have to watch on helplessly while he ran around doing terrible things anymore. But he wouldn't let me. Every time I tried to kill myself he'd take over so that I couldn't."

Alistair lay down beside him and wrapped an arm around Ryou's waist.

"You don't have to talk to me about this."

"No, I want to, it's just that no one ever wants to hear about it. It's so maddening to listen to Yugi and Téa and Tristan and Joey get all worked up about the Pharaoh being gone when no one ever even acknowledged what I had to endure at the hands of the Spirit of the Ring. I still dream about it sometimes," he added softly. "They have _no idea_ how much he tortured me."

"I'm so sorry that that happened to you," Alistair said, pulling the snowy-haired Brit closer. He couldn't imagine anyone hurting someone so gentle. Ryou rolled over so that he and Alistair were lying face to face.

"Thank you for listening to me. You're the first person I've talked to about that." He snuggled up against the redhead's chest so that Alistair's chin was resting on the top of his head.

They lay together for almost two hours, alternating between talking and kissing. Outside it started to drizzle which only served to make things cozier.

"Do you want to watch a movie?" Ryou asked suddenly. "I could make popcorn."

"Don't forget you have class tomorrow." Ryou sat up and waved the sentiment away.

"I know, but even if we watch a movie now I could still get to bed before midnight."

"Yes, but I know what's going to happen. We'll watch a movie and then it'll remind you of some game, you'll spend another thirty minutes looking up and downloading the game, and then at least an hour and a half playing it which will put you in bed, at the earliest, at almost two in the morning."

"I'd still get seven hours of sleep," Ryou pointed out cheerfully. "Come on; I'll let you pick what we watch!"

"What you mean to say is you'll let me choose between vampires, zombies, ghosts, and psychopathic serial killers."

"I'm sorry, was that not clear?" Alistair sighed, but he was smiling.

"Serial killers then."

"Oh, I know a really good one! Have you ever seen _Silence of the Lambs_?"

"No."

"It's rather old, but it's a classic about a cannibal named Hannibal Lector."

"Why not?"

With a real life backdrop of rainfall, Ryou and Alistair sat on the floor in front of the TV eating popcorn and petting Sewell every time she walked past while the movie played.

Afterwards, as Alistair had predicted, Ryou ended up gaming until almost two at which time they both crawled into bed, Alistair pulling the Brit against him.

It was then, after Ryou fell asleep, that Alistair thought about Seto. Was the brunette still shut up in his room? Had he cut himself again? Or was he over the whole thing already? Did he miss him at all?

As angry as he was at Seto, he couldn't help but continue to think back on the haunted look of utter betrayal that had been on his face when he'd seen Alistair standing in the doorway after getting home.

He believed that Seto meant what he had said about hating him more than he'd hated Gozaburo. Knowing what he knew about the brunette made him worry that Seto might not see this as one incident, but instead see it as another in a series of betrayals and heartaches, thus causing him to be more upset than he otherwise would have been.

He also really wanted to know what exactly Britney had told him. Given that Seto had been planning on going public with regards to his sexuality anyway, he assumed that there must have been more that was said than just that, and he had a horrible feeling that Britney had told him what had been told to Darren about the scars on his wrist. It was the single most personal thing, besides his occasional nightmares about his step-father, that Alistair had known about Seto, and he never should have told Darren even though he hadn't mentioned Seto's name.

The more he thought about it the worse he felt about everything that had happened. He finally decided to take Trudy up on her suggestion to check up on Seto and make sure, if nothing else, that he was alright and once more offer the brunette the chance to hear his side of things. But he was scared. What if, though it was highly unlikely, the brunette did forgive him and ask for him to come back? He couldn't do that to Ryou after promising that he wouldn't use him. Oh but his heart still longed for Seto, and no matter how much he liked Ryou, he wasn't sure that that would ever change.

* * *

_Alistair slid the door to the sauna shut behind him._

"_Will you at least try to relax and stay still this time?" Seto asked with a small frown. Alistair shrugged. He felt horribly mischievous for some reason._

"_I might." He felt himself grinning. Seto rolled his eyes, but Alistair could see the smile twitching on his lips._

"_Come here." The next thing Alistair knew, he was lying on his back with Seto on top of him, the CEO's cobalt eyes boring into his. He reached up and traced the muscles in Seto's chest with his fingertip_

"_I love you, Seto," he said softly before pulling the brunette in for a kiss._

_Before long, Seto started to go down on him, causing Alistair to arch his back in pleasure._

"_Seto…mmm, Seto…"_

"Alistair, wake up." Alistair's eyes snapped open. Ryou was looking down at him concernedly. "Are you alright?" he asked as the redhead tried to pull himself out of the dream.

"What?"

"You were thrashing around and mumbling about something, but I didn't understand what you were saying…"

"It was nothing." Alistair felt both annoyed that he'd been woken up and guilty that he felt annoyed. "I'm sorry I woke you up."

"Don't apologize; it's fine. And if you ever want to talk about anything, I'm here for you, I promise."

"Thank you. But right now I just want to go back to sleep."

"Alright. I have to get up in about an hour, but I'll try not to wake you up, ok?" They lay back down, Ryou wrapping his arms protectively around Alistair who was very grateful that he hadn't still been spooning the Brit while having that dream. What was wrong with him?

* * *

**Author's Note**: 'But they've only been broken up for two weeks!' you cry in indignation. True, but I've gone through break-ups myself before, and it was always in the first few weeks afterwards that I felt the most inclined to jump into bed with other people as a coping mechanism. Alistair, unlike Seto, was never so guarded about his feelings, and I therefore find it reasonable that he would quickly fall for Ryou-especially given that they're living in such close proximity to each other, and also since he already knew that Ryou liked him.

And then there's Ryou who's been craving closeness after being isolated against his will for so long; of course he'd fall into Alistair's arms. I would.


	15. For Whom the Bell Tolls

**Disclaimer: **I got 99 problems, and not owning Yu-Gi-Oh! is definitely one of them.

**Trigger Warning: **Cutting, suicide

* * *

_"Everybody says_  
_That time heals the pain_  
_I've been waiting forever_  
_That day never came."_

_~That Day, _Tokio Hotel

**Chapter 15**

Seto sat at his desk, idly twirling his knife around, slowly drilling a hole into the wood with the tip of the blade. There were spatters of blood here and there on the desk's smooth finish, on the carpet next to the chair, on the chair. There were smears of it on his hands and his wrist of course, and on the knife. It was under his nails and in the grooves of his hands.

It was still oozing out of the incision he'd made in his wrist as he continued to drill the knife tip into the wood, tiny splinters mixing with the small pools of blood.

Normally cutting himself brought with it a sense of relief. This time: nothing. Pain, certainly, but even that had only been momentary. He felt nothing now.

He'd been sitting at his desk for almost two hours. He knew that it was early in the morning, but time meant very little to him. He'd slept so much in the past two weeks that when he'd woken up he couldn't go back to sleep no matter how long he lay in bed with his eyes closed. That had been almost five hours ago. He felt a flicker of annoyance towards Trudy for having (sneakily she had thought) removed the bottle of sleeping pills from his bathroom cabinet along with all the other bottles of pills he stored there, afraid, he had no doubt, that he might try to overdose on them.

An overdose would never be his style though. If he was going to take his own life, he wanted it to be by his own hand, not through the use of some agent like pills. Besides, he didn't want his last few minutes alive to be spent throwing up.

Did he really want to die? Had it come to that? These were the questions he'd spent the past two hours contemplating. After thinking long and hard he had come to the conclusion that yes, he wanted to die. It wasn't as dramatic a decision as one might think given that it was a question he'd been asking himself for years.

He'd always planned on taking his own life once Mokuba was of age and taken care of. Then his justification for suicide had been because he would have completed his function. With nothing else to live for he might as well die and be remembered as a success rather than face having to continually outdo himself for the rest of his life to stay number one. That had been childish he realized now.

The blood on his wrist started to congeal and he continued to twirl the knife between his fingers, the rhythm and pressure steady.

Back then, even though he'd made detailed plans for how and when to kill himself, he hadn't really _wanted_ to die, it had just seemed logical. Cutting himself had never been a way to flirt with death, but rather, a method to siphon off his feelings of stress, loneliness, and failure.

Now, he truly had no will to live anymore. He was sick and tired of always getting the short end of the stick, of being punished for trying to do the right thing, of never being good enough, of feeling completely and utterly alone. He wanted everything to just stop.

Seto did not believe in God or gods, or an afterlife of any kind. He believed that when a person died that was it. Game over. As a child that had terrified him, as an adult he found it strangely comforting.

Up until that morning his thoughts had been scattered and uncertain. He'd felt sad then angry, then sad again, the two emotions continuously vying for his mood, but now his head was completely clear. He felt perfectly calm.

If he was going to do it, there were a few things that needed sorting out first. He finally set the knife down on the table and stood up, slightly dizzy both from blood loss and hunger. He needed his laptop and he needed paper or else someone might call foul play. But first he needed to clean himself up.

As he stood under the shower he watched the blood wash off his wrist and hands, momentarily discoloring the otherwise clear water as it ran down the drain. He thought of all the times that he and Alistair had showered together, of how Alistair looked when his wet hair clung to his face, water droplets dripping off his skin.

He had stopped asking himself why the redhead had done this to him several days before. In the end it didn't really matter; he'd betrayed him plain and simple. It was funny though. He'd been so hurt and so angry when he'd first found out, but now he couldn't even bring himself to hate him. Even thought it had all been fake on the other man's side, it had not been fake on his. He'd loved Alistair even though he'd never said so in so many words.

He'd truly been happy for the first time in years. Perhaps the saying: 'it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all' wasn't so idiotic after all.

He wrapped a towel around his waist and walked out of the bathroom just as Trudy walked in holding a tray. She jumped in surprise when she saw him.

"Oh! Seto! You gave me quite a fright!" she said, steadying the tray. This was the first time she'd seen him up and about and acting in any way normal since the day Alistair had left. She was deeply relieved that Seto finally seemed to be snapping out of his depression.

"I'm sorry."

"No, no, it's fine. I'll just leave this here." She set the tray on the bed and quickly left again. Had she walked around the bed to place it on the desk she would have seen the blood and the knife. He wasn't sure if he was glad that she hadn't or not.

He pulled on a set of fresh clothes before setting his laptop flat on the desk, over several splashes of blood, and booting it up.

* * *

As soon as Trudy got downstairs, she hurried to her apartment where her husband, the groundskeeper George was still sitting and eating his breakfast.

"Who are you calling?" he asked her around a mouthful of toast as she plucked the phone off the counter and scanned the list of phone numbers she kept on the wall next to it.

"Mokuba," she said, dialing. "Seto's out of bed today." George had never understood his wife's attachment to Seto Kaiba. He was unpleasant with an immature streak in the groundskeeper's opinion, which he'd told his wife on several occasions.

"He finally ready to stop wallowing in self pity?" Trudy hung up the phone abruptly and put her hands on her hips.

"He was _heartbroken_, the poor thing. He thought that he'd been betrayed by one of the people he cared the most about. You'd be upset too."

"Maybe if he wasn't the kind of person who did things that make you want to betray him he wouldn't be so paranoid."

"Now George, that's not fair and you know it. I've been over this with you at least a hundred times. It's not his fault that he's like that. That horrible man made him this way. Ten years ago I stood in this very kitchen and I said that I didn't think any good would come of Mr. Kaiba adopting those boys, you remember?"

"I remember."

"He poisoned his mind with all his talk of not being able to trust people."

"Mokuba seems fine," George pointed out.

"That's only because he had Seto to protect him from all of that, but Seto didn't have anyone to protect him. I tried, you know I did, but there was only so much I could do…"

"It's not your fault he turned out like he did. He was an obnoxious kid and he's an obnoxious adult and the sooner you stop acting like he's your child and that it's somehow because of something you did or didn't do that he's so detestable the happier you'll be. I will never understand what you and Alistair see in him. How is he anyway? You heard from him since the day you dropped Sewell off with him?" She shook her head.

"I think he's afraid he'll get me in trouble with Seto. He seemed alright when I saw him, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was still upset about the whole thing."

"That's exactly what I'm talking about." George set his coffee cup down on the table with a dull thud. "How can you just throw someone who you've been in a relationship with for almost a year under the bus like that without even hearing them out? If I were Alistair, I'd be pretty pissed off myself."

"Language, dear. And yes, I agree that that was an extreme reaction, but you have to acknowledge that Seto is not a normal young man; he grew up under very unusual circumstances. He's been more or less isolated from the world since he was ten years old; you can't expect him to react to things the way the average person would." George shook his head, but didn't retort. He and Trudy had had this discussion many times in the past decade and neither of them was willing to budge.

"You're probably right. Anyway, I've got to get going if I'm going to get to Janet's place on time." He stood up and pushed his chair in.

"Don't forget to give the kids a kiss from me," Trudy reminded him. "And ask Janet for that jambalaya recipe she told me about."

"Will do." He pulled his jacket off a hook by the door and stuck a hand in his pocket to make sure he had the keys to their small white car. "Try not to worry so much about him," he told Trudy after giving her a kiss. "I'll call you when I'm on my way back."

After he was gone Trudy called Mokuba.

Mokuba, who was sitting at his brother's desk in his office at the Kaiba Corp skyscraper, trying to answer an email he'd received from the Chinese computer software company Sapphire, felt his phone vibrate. Wearily, he answered when he saw that it was Trudy.

"Hello?"

"Mokuba! Seto's out of bed. I went up to bring him breakfast and he had just come out of the shower. I thought you'd want to know that he seemed a lot better." Relief, the likes of which he'd never known, flooded through the raven-haired teen.

"That's great news Trudy. I'm on my way." He started to hang up.

"I wouldn't say anything to him about Alistair if I were you."

"Don't worry: I wasn't planning on it. I've seen enough of this place in the past two weeks to last me a lifetime."

After getting off the phone with Trudy, Mokuba paged Roland to ask if he could take over for him for the day. Roland reluctantly agreed, and Mokuba raced to the company parking structure, calling Alfred for a ride on his way. He waited the ten minutes it took the limo driver to get there extremely impatiently, wanting to get to the mansion as soon as possible to see for himself whether or not his brother was back to normal.

* * *

Seto wasn't even a third of the way finished with what he needed to do when he heard a car pulling up the driveway. He saw Mokuba hop out and quickly set the paper he'd been writing on on his laptop keyboard and closed the lid, strategically placing the computer over the worst of the bloodstains on his desk. Afterwards, he carefully placed his knife in the bottom drawer and got up to sit on the bed, knowing that he wouldn't have to wait long for his brother to make an appearance in his doorway.

Sure enough, Mokuba wrenched the door open only seconds later.

"Seto!" he exclaimed, noting that the brunette had changed his clothes and taken a shower. He rushed to embrace his older sibling, hugging him around the neck and pressing his face into Seto's shoulder. "Promise me that you won't scare me like that again," he demanded, squeezing.

"I promise," Seto said honestly. If all went as planned, it was a promise he was prepared to keep.

"You better not!" Mokuba shifted position so that he was looking into his brother's slightly gaunt face. "I almost really did take over Kaiba Corp this time." He'd hoped his statement would elicit a smile, but Seto's face was utterly expressionless.

"You've been going into work for me?"

"Of course. It's like you always say: Kaiba Corp doesn't just run itself."

"Do you enjoy it?"

"Being you?" Mokuba found the questions strange, but he was grateful that Seto was talking at all. "It's kind of boring being in charge to be honest, and I can't believe the amount of emails you get a day, but I guess it's ok. There's a lot about running KC that I still don't really get though, so it's a good thing you're back! You are going to go back to work, right?"

"Not today," Seto replied evasively. "Anyway, don't you have homework or something to do?"

"No. Weren't you listening? I've been acting as CEO since you've been gone. I haven't had time for school."

"Fine. But I need some time on my own, so could you find something to do that doesn't involve being in here?" Mokuba stared at him incredulously.

"That's all you have to say after scaring me half to death? 'Go away?' I thought I might never get you back and now that you are you're telling me to leave?" _Good_, Seto thought. _He's_ _angry with me. That'll make it easier for him once I'm gone._

"Look Mokuba: I have a lot on my plate right now. Can you try to understand that?" Mokuba furrowed his eyebrows and glared at his brother.

"Fine. I'll go. But I'd appreciate it if you stopped acting like _I_ betrayed you, because _I_ didn't." With that he stomped out of the room, not bothering to close the door behind him. Seto supposed he deserved that.

* * *

"You don't have to walk to class with me if it's out of your way," Ryou said as he packed himself a sandwich for lunch, Sewell sitting on the ground at his feet, angling for a piece of ham. Secretly he hoped that Alistair really would so that others might see that he actually had friends, or in this case, whatever it was that Alistair represented. A boyfriend? He wasn't sure.

"It's not. But I'd go even if it were just to have an excuse to leave the apartment if nothing else." Ryou smiled.

"Ok, then let's go."

After reaching the street and beginning the fifteen minute walk to the university, Alistair, acting out a sudden impulse that he had no doubt was brought on by a desire to differentiate this relationship from the one he'd had with Seto, twined his fingers through Ryou's.

Ryou was startled, but also pleased to know that Alistair had no qualms about being seen this way with him.

They received a few raised eyebrows and backwards glances, but many people, people rushing to work or some other engagement, mistook Ryou for a girl and therefore noticed nothing unusual about the couple.

When they reached the classroom that was home to Ryou's British Literature seminar, located in the bowels of Domino U's main building, outside of which several of the Brit's classmates were lounging, Alistair kissed him, almost as a dare for someone to say something. When no one did (though they had the attention of everyone in the vicinity), Alistair asked Ryou what kinds of snacks he should buy for when Yugi and the gang came over that evening.

"Joey and Tristan mentioned bringing beer and Téa will probably bring some kind of dessert. I'm not sure about Yugi, he didn't say…Just go ahead and get crisps or something like that."

"What are 'crisps?'"

"Oh, sorry. Chips."

"Ok, will do. I'll see you later then." He kissed him again and then left.

As soon as the redhead turned the corner, Ryou took the confidence that Alistair had breathed into him to ask the girl sitting on the floor next to the door (to whom he'd never spoken) what she'd thought of the books they would be discussing for the last day of class.

Alistair left the building feeling slightly unsettled. He was treading a thin line at the moment. He'd promised not to use Ryou, but he was. The Brit was a means of distraction and he knew it. He liked him, that wasn't untrue, but he was also having erotic dreams about Seto, indicating that, were he offered the choice, he wouldn't pick Ryou.

The optimum solution would therefore be to end things now while their friendship was still salvageable, but he didn't want to. He sensed that he could eventually fall in love with Ryou, that they could be happy together. But first he had to shut the door on his feelings for Seto forever. That meant that he couldn't call to ask about him or even think about him. Seto Kaiba had to be dead to him or else he'd never be able to move on.

* * *

As the sun began to set, Seto finally placed the letter he'd been working on all day aside and sat back in his chair. He watched as the sky slowly faded to black. Everything was ready now. He'd made sure that with him gone his fortune, assets, shares, and house would go to his brother with Roland acting as guardian until Mokuba's eighteenth birthday. He'd double-checked their finances and had described in his letter where copies of the passwords to all of his accounts could be found. The hardest part, the part that had taken him the better part of the day to write, had been explaining why in a way that didn't sound overly melodramatic. Finally he'd simply written:

_When mom and dad died I told you that I'd take their place, but instead I'm just going to make you go through losing them all over again. I'm sorry that it has to be that way. _

_I know what you might think, but this isn't about him; I always choose my own destiny. This is a decision that I came to as the result of having reflected on my life. I hate looking backwards, but as it turns out I couldn't quite outrun my past and it caught up with me. _

_Some of the things that have brought me here were outside of my control, but some of them were the result of my own doing, and those I would not change because they allowed me in some way to make your life better._

_Every once in a while you ask me why I don't smile like I did when we were kids, and the answer is that the part of me that played chess with you at the orphanage and laughed at the lame jokes that that guy who was in charge of the day room used to tell us no longer exists. I thought that maybe I'd found it again, but I was wrong. _

_I try to live my life without regrets, but I do regret not having spent more time with you. You always told me I worked too much, but I foolishly thought that the hours I pulled were for your benefit when really I should have stayed home more. _

_As it is, Kaiba Corp was my life's work, but it doesn't have to be yours if you don't want it to be; the reason I worked so hard was so that you would be free to do whatever you wanted. If you do decide to sell it, choose the buyer carefully, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't sell it to Schroeder Corp out of spite. _

_I swore that I'd always be there to protect you, but it seems I'm going to have to break that promise, not that I've always been able to keep it in the past either. If I'd been better at performing my duty you never would have gotten kidnapped. _

_You're still young, but you're already a far better person than I ever was; I hope that you continue to grow into the man that I never could be. I'm proud of you Mokie. _

_~Seto_

It wasn't long-winded, nor was it horribly informative, but he didn't want to burden Mokuba with the pathetic details. Knowing his brother, Mokuba would think that it was his fault.

He wasn't foolish enough to think that Mokuba wouldn't be upset, but he wouldn't be leaving him all alone; Trudy would look after him, as would Roland. And Mokuba had friends, and a girlfriend; he'd be fine.

_I'm so selfish_, he thought. _And weak. Ultimately he's better off without me to hold him back._

As he was holding the knife in his hand, Seto realized that the last thing he was going to see before he died was the sky which was strewn with stars. _Time and tide wait for no man_.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Before you flip shit and exit out because of this, know that this is not the end. Be patient and all will be revealed. Also: poor Seto. I truly believe that he'd behave this way under these circumstances, but because I love him to pieces, this was really hard to write.


	16. A Cold Slap of Reality

**Disclaimer: **If I owned Yu-Gi-Oh! there'd be an amazing live action movie with really hot actors, but as it is...

* * *

_"Why oh Why_  
_Did it take you so long to want something more?_

_And then you ask yourself, is this where you belong?_  
_Is it right, or is it wrong?_  
_Does it matter what's right, In The Heat Of The Night?"_

_~In the Heat of the Night,_ Pat Benatar

**Chapter 16 **

Alistair wasn't sure how he felt about hanging out with Yugi and his friends. Because Yugi had inadvertently made it clear how he felt about the redhead, he was certain the spiky-haired duelist had shared those thoughts with his friends. It didn't help that they arrived before Ryou got back from class.

After letting them in, the five of them sat in Alistair and Ryou's living room in uncomfortable silence. After a few very long minutes, Joey couldn't stand the tension anymore and decided to voice everyone's thoughts.

"Can I just point out how weird this is?"

"_Joey_!" Téa hissed.

"I'm just sayin' that I think we're _all_ thinking about how that last time we saw this guy he was working for some weird Atlantian ghost who was trying to take over the world by stealin' people's souls. But Dartz has been gone for over a year; so what's this punk still doing hangin' around?" He looked accusatorially at Alistair.

"I live here," Alistair replied neutrally, trying to keep his anger in check. Seto had told him about Joey Wheeler and his tendency to speak before he thought about what he was saying.

"Yeah, but why do you live _here_?" Shoving a hand in Joey's face, Tristan said:

"What Joey's trying to say is: how do you and Bakura know each other?"

"And I think what you're _really_ trying to say is: because Ryou and I know each other and because we both have less than perfect pasts, unlike the four of you apparently, we must be up to something.

Let me make this perfectly clear: the Spirit of the Ring is gone, so do Ryou, the one that's supposedly your friend, a favor by not acting like he's going to send you to the Shadow Realm every time you see him. It's an insult to compare him to the creature that possessed him."

"Look pal," Joey started. "Bakura's been our friend a lot longer than you've even known him, so don't act like you have a right to call us the bad guys." Alistair was beginning to see why Seto disliked this group so much; they were hypocrites, claiming to be such good friends when really they didn't care about Ryou at all.

"All I'm saying is that if you really consider yourselves his friends, you have a hell of a way of showing it." Yugi, Téa, Tristan, and Joey exchanged guilty looks.

"Sorry I'm late." Ryou breezed into the living room, having heard none of the comments that had been made. "Let me just drop my stuff in the bedroom and then I can introduce you all properly. I hope you haven't been waiting long." In the twenty or so seconds that the Brit was gone, the five in the living room tried to avoid catching each other's eye.

"Right," Ryou said, sitting beside Alistair on the floor with Sewell cradled in his arms. "I suppose you've all already introduced yourselves but, Alistair, these are my friends, and guys, this is my roommate Alistair. And this," he held up Sewell, who looked over her shoulder at him reproachfully, "is Sewell." Grateful for an excuse to move past the awkwardness, Téa cooed and reached out to rub the calico's head.

"She's so cute!"

"She's Alistair's. He found her outside a restaurant."

They spent the next few minutes playing with the cat until Joey made the mistake of rubbing her fur the wrong way. She hissed and swatted at him with her paw before streaking off towards the bedroom, but before her untimely exit, the cat had successfully broken the tension.

Though they didn't say so, Alistair's defense of Ryou had simultaneously assuaged their suspicions about the redhead, and guilted them into realizing how absurd their worries about Ryou had been. Yugi in particular felt chagrined when he recognized how unfounded his qualms about Alistair had been. He'd forgiven Raphael on the grounds that Raphael had been controlled by the Orichalcos, yet he hadn't paid Alistair the same courtesy even though he'd claimed to have.

The carton of beer that Joey and Tristan had provided was quickly emptied which served to loosen Joey's already quick tongue.

"Hey Alistair," he said, turning to the redhead. "Rich Boy never gave me a straight answer: did you two duel on top of his plane?" Alistair's features immediately became drawn.

"Yeah, we did."

"What happened up there anyway? Why'd the plane crash?"

"Because of the Seal of Orichalcos." It was plain to everyone that Alistair didn't want to talk about it, but Joey had never been one to take a hint.

"He was really vague on the details about that. Did you almost beat him or something?"

"Not exactly."

"Hey Téa, what are your plans for when you get to New York?" Ryou asked in an effort to diffuse the situation. "Will you still have a bit of break left, or will your classes start up right away?"

While Téa outlined her plans for her first few weeks in New York, Ryou casually rested his head on Alistair's shoulder. Alistair tensed, having been trained by Seto to avoid affection in public like the plague, but quickly remembered that he and Ryou had no such rule and relaxed, even going so far as to put an arm around the Brit. The gesture had the desired effect and Yugi, Joey, Téa, and Tristan all realized at the same moment that Alistair wasn't merely a platonic roommate.

"Is anyone else still hungry?" Ryou asked the room at large, removing his head from Alistair's shoulder. There was a general murmur of assent. He turned to the redhead. "Could you put a pack of popcorn in the microwave? The box is in the cabinet above the stove."

"Sure." Alistair got up and began rummaging through the smaller of the kitchen's two main cabinets. "I don't see it."

"Hang on." Ryou got to his feet and joined Alistair at the kitchenette. "You know, it might be in the cabinet over the refrigerator now that I'm thinking about it. I'm sorry."

"It's ok." Alistair found himself leaning in to kiss the Brit, not caring that they had an audience.

Once the popcorn started to pop in the microwave, the two sat down again, this time with Ryou leaning against Alistair's chest.

Téa and Yugi politely avoided staring by turning their attention towards each other, having finally gotten together several months prior after Téa bit the bullet and asked the Duel Monsters champion out on a date.

Tristan, whose girlfriend Serenity wasn't there to distract him, and Joey, whose on again off again girlfriend Mai was currently overseas competing in an all-female Duel Monsters tournament, couldn't stop themselves from goggling at the couple.

Pretending he didn't notice, Ryou asked Tristan if he was excited that school was starting again soon.

The longer that Ryou leaned up against him, the more annoyed Alistair became by the others' presence, which they must have eventually noticed because they left en masse shortly before midnight.

"What did you think?" Ryou asked after waving goodbye as Yugi's small blue car and Tristan and Joey's black truck pulled away from the curb. Alistair shrugged.

"They're ok."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. I guess it was just that they told a lot of anecdotes that involved people I don't know, so that was kind of boring, and Téa getting emotional about leaving for New York was awkward after she started crying. The whole experience was mediocre for me. If we would have actually been doing something it would have been better. But just sitting around and talking isn't really my thing."

"I'm sorry you were bored, and also that Joey kept asking you about Kaiba. It was nothing personal; he just really enjoys hearing stories that make Kaiba look bad."

"I noticed that. Why?"

"They have a bit of a history, mostly one involving Kaiba calling him a mutt or a deadbeat or a loser."

"Oh." That sounded slightly more antagonistic and juvenile than Alistair would have expected from Seto who, though not always pleasant, tended to maintain at least a certain degree of maturity, outside, of course, of any duel he played without Mokuba's safety on the line; there all bets were off.

Ryou wrapped his arms around Alistair's neck and leaned in to kiss him. Alistair was surprised by the Brit's eagerness, but not so much so that he didn't reciprocate, though he was still coming to terms with the idea of taking the lead.

Soon the two fell into bed together.

Alistair was rather at a loss as to what to do in this situation since all the experience he had involved the other person acting as the 'top', and he also wasn't sure what would be acceptable. Should he wait for Ryou to tell him what he wanted or just try something and see what he said? Alistair's inner debate was halted by Ryou tentatively reaching up the back of his thin tank top as they kissed.

Just as before, when Alistair took off Ryou's shirt the Brit seemed to grow uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "It's just that I've never done this…But I want to," he added quickly.

"I told you before: just tell me if I do something you don't like." Ryou nodded, his tense expression revealing just how nervous he was. Alistair reached out and stroked his cheek. "If it makes you feel better _I've_ never done this either." Ryou's amber eyes widened in surprise.

"You mean you and Kaiba never…?"

"We did, but never like _this_."

"What do you mean?" Suddenly feeling rather hot around the collar himself, Alistair said:

"I mean, I was always…" As he struggled to find the words, Ryou realized what he was trying to say.

"Oh. I guess that makes sense." He giggled. "Sorry. I hadn't thought about it, but now that you mention it I can't help but picture it and," he continued to giggle, "and then I remembered something Joey said once about Kaiba being really uptight and needing a good shag and it's just funny. I'm sorry," he added when he saw that Alistair looked slightly put out, his smile fading. "That wasn't very thoughtful of me." Alistair shook his head, though he had been upset by how flippantly Ryou had joked about his and Seto's sex life. He didn't find anything particularly funny when he thought back on all the times he and Seto had had sex. But he and Seto weren't together anymore. Not that that decision was one _he_ would have chosen. If only Seto hadn't jumped to conclusions…

His sudden flash of annoyance towards the brunette spurred him to redouble his efforts to make his and Ryou's relationship a success.

Ryou had been certain that by laughing he'd ruined the mood, but Alistair quickly proved that theory wrong by firmly pressing his lips against the Brit's before delving his tongue into his mouth.

"Hang on," Ryou said slightly breathlessly as Alistair started to slide his loose pajama pants down his hips. He reached over to the nightstand positioned next to the bed. The room was dark so he was forced to feel around blindly. "Here." He could feel the heat rising in his face as he pressed the condom into Alistair's hand. It was the redhead's turn to be surprised.

Given that he and Seto had had months of build up before having sex for the first time, he was taken aback to discover that perhaps not everyone waited that long. Then again, he'd hooked up with Darren after knowing him for all of fifteen minutes, but they hadn't gone all the way.

"Are you sure you want to?" he asked. Ryou nodded, though he looked slightly nervous. He'd never thought he'd be the kind of person to give himself up so easily, but the situation felt right. Alistair was someone he liked and trusted and also someone he was attracted to which, collectively, seemed like the right combination of traits to warrant a yes.

Consent established, Alistair set the condom (which given that it had a packet of lube attached to the back was probably from _Twist_) aside and began kissing along Ryou's neck and chest, slowly working his way down the Brit's pale torso.

As Alistair went down on him, Ryou let out an inadvertent moan and closed his eyes.

"Ok," Alistair said softly a few minutes later, one hand still jerking the Brit off. "Get on your stomach and try to relax."

"Easier said than done," Ryou mumbled, taking a deep breath, his heart pounding in his chest. But he dutifully rolled over after Alistair let go of him.

Though not as nervous as his counterpart, Alistair was nonetheless apprehensive. He didn't want to hurt Ryou, but he also knew that there was no way he could avoid it. To try and help the Brit relax, he massaged the tense muscles in his back until he felt them begin to loosen up. He paused briefly to open the packet of lube and squeezed a generous amount onto his fingers, the substance unexpectedly cool and sticky to the touch.

Just as when Seto slid his fingers into _him_, Ryou gripped the sheets and bit his lip in an attempt to deter the sounds that nonetheless began to spill from his mouth. Once he was sure that he had done all he could, Alistair said:

"This is going to hurt, but try to stay relaxed and then it should start to feel good, ok?" Ryou decided not to mention, at least not yet, that this wasn't the first time his body had been put in this position, merely the first time he was personally getting to experience it, and said that he understood.

This time when he bit his lip it was to distract himself from the pain that Alistair was inflicting on him.

Alistair tried to alleviate the Brit's obvious discomfort by tilting his hips up slightly, which seemed to work; he felt Ryou's body beginning to relax again.

Even as he was using the other man's body for his own pleasure, he couldn't help but feel protective of him, making every effort to please him, implementing techniques that Seto had used on _him_ that he'd found particularly pleasurable, including flipping Ryou onto his back.

Alistair leaned down and captured the Brit's lips in a kiss as he continued to thrust into him. It was a very different sensation than he was used to, and a lot more work, but he enjoyed it.

Ryou continued to verbally indicate that the redhead was doing a good job, especially when Alistair lay practically flat across his chest so that his uneven breathing sounded in his ear.

"Ooh, Alistair. Mmm…"

After they both climaxed, Alistair pulled Ryou into his arms.

"How was that?" he asked, running a hand gently through the Brit's feathery white locks.

"That was really nice," Ryou murmured, suddenly sleepy, more comfortably nestling against Alistair's chest, his head resting in the hollow of the redhead's neck.

"I'm sorry if I hurt you."

"Just at first, but I knew that that would be painful. _I_ may never have done this before, but as we both know I didn't always get a choice when it came to what happened to my body." Alistair's eyebrows contracted in concern.

"I'm sorry." Ryou shrugged.

"I can't do anything about it now. I'm just glad that that part of my life is behind me for good." He leaned up to give Alistair a kiss.

They lay in comfortable silence for a few minutes. "Can I ask you something personal?" Ryou asked tentatively, not entirely sure he wanted to know the answer. Alistair could tell just by the tone of the Brit's voice that the question would be about Seto, but as little as he wanted to talk about the brunette, he supposed that it was only natural that Ryou would want to ask about him.

"Sure."

"How…how long were you and Kaiba together before you did this?" Alistair realized as soon as the question was raised that the answer wasn't simple given that there had been five months in which he'd been gone in the middle, but then again he supposed that he and Seto hadn't been together as such before he'd left, so perhaps a more accurate number would be the amount of time after he'd gotten back.

"About a month."

"Oh." It was not the answer Ryou had been hoping for, and Alistair quickly elaborated.

"But it was complicated. We didn't even like each other at first; we actually hated each other, or at least I hated him. We argued a lot for months, and we even got into a fist fight once, but then something changed and we just sort of…" He trailed off. He wasn't comfortable being so cheesy as to say that he and Seto had fallen in love with each other, though in essence that was what had happened. Ryou got the idea.

"That's intense," he said finally, a hint of jealousy in his voice. "This must be horribly boring for you by comparison." Alistair sat up, forcing Ryou to as well, and cupped the Brit's face in his hands.

"That's not true. You have no idea how nice it is to be able to be with someone who you don't argue with every other day, who lives a normal life, who you don't have to break down a wall to be with. I did care about him, and there is a lot of history between me and him, but I would never compare the two of you so that doesn't matter. I'm with you now." Ryou looked into Alistair's silver eyes and chose to believe him.

"It's really nice to hear you say that."

* * *

A lawnmower starting up just outside the bedroom window jarred Alistair awake. He blearily looked around for some indication as to what time it was. The sunlight streaming through the window was weak indicating that it was still early. He had no memory of falling asleep the previous night, but obviously they both had.

Ryou had rolled over at some point and was lying face down against a pillow, only half under the covers, his silvery hair in tangles.

Trying not to wake him, Alistair eased out of the bed, intending to walk over to the bathroom after checking the time. He squinted as he tried to read the display on the digital clock sitting on top of Ryou's bookshelf and took several steps towards it. Before he was quite able to read it, he tripped over his own crumpled pants and banged his knee hard against the bed frame. He swore involuntarily and loudly, rubbing the spot. The noise caused Ryou to stir. He yawned and sat up.

"What's going on?" he asked groggily, rubbing his eyes. Even though he now had a throbbing pain in his right knee, Alistair couldn't help but notice how attractive Ryou looked barely covered in the thin white sheet and with tendrils of his thick hair sticking out every which way.

"Nothing, I just tripped and hit my knee," Alistair admitted ruefully, realizing how stupid he must look standing naked in the middle of Ryou's bedroom, bent over and holding his leg. Ryou giggled sleepily before yawning again.

"What time is it?"

"Uh." Finally able to see the numbers on the clock, Alistair answered. "Eight-seventeen."

"I suppose I might as well get up." Ryou suddenly recognized his own nakedness and became rather shy. Pulling the sheet more securely around himself he hunted around for his pajama bottoms and pulled them on before getting out of the bed. He stretched languorously.

"How do you feel?" Alistair asked. He remembered all too well how sore he'd been after he and Seto had had sex for the first time.

"Alright. You weren't lying about it hurting though. Whenever the spirit did that I just sort of tried to block it out, so I never had to actually feel it before. But I feel fine now."

"Good."

"I was going to take a quick shower; do you need the bathroom first?"

"Yeah, just give me a couple of minutes. Oh, and do you want me to make breakfast? I think we still have a few eggs." Ryou's expression became stern.

"You are not to touch anything in that kitchen that can't be cooked in the microwave or smothered in milk, not after you burned my pan."

"I'm still sorry about that." Ryou smiled.

"Oh, don't worry; I'll eventually come up with some way for you to pay me back."

"I have no doubt."

After finishing in the bathroom and getting dressed, Alistair walked out to the living room where Sewell was waiting for him. She immediately demanded food and he obliged her, scooping a small portion of dry cat food into a ceramic bowl for her. She purred as she gobbled down the kibble.

Finally Ryou emerged from the bathroom wearing a loose-fitting white and blue striped shirt over blue jeans.

"Do any of your shirts fit?" Alistair asked with a grin. Ryou looked down at his chest.

"You don't think this fits?"

"None of your shirts do."

"There's a difference between being too loose and just not fitting like a second skin. You fall more on that end of the scale. I don't think I've ever seen you wear anything that would actually let you breathe." It was Alistair's turn to appraise his own clothes. He was wearing a tight black tank top and his dark skinny jeans.

"I guess you're right," he admitted.

"Not always, but in this case I would have to say that indeed I am. I have no problem with your clothes though," he added. "But I could never pull them off like you do; I don't have enough muscle." No one had ever called Alistair muscular before, given that he wasn't particularly, especially not compared to anyone he had ever found himself with before, but he supposed that compared to Ryou he was.

"You could train that though, if you wanted to." Ryou shrugged as he pulled a second frying pan out of a cupboard.

"Maybe, but then I'd have to sacrifice valuable gaming time and I'm not sure that it would be worth that." Alistair rolled his eyes.

"You and your video games…"

"It's no worse than you and your books." He opened the refrigerator to get the eggs. "Oh, and would you mind turning the radio on? I want to hear if it's supposed to rain today."

"Do you have somewhere to go?"

"I'm meeting up with Joey and Tristan in front of the Student Union; I mentioned that yesterday. We're seeing Téa off at the airport."

"Oh," Alistair said as he flipped the radio situated on top of Ryou's TV on. It was on a commercial break so the redhead tuned it out and tried to figure out what _he_ wanted to do. He didn't have to go to work until later that afternoon so he had the whole morning free…

The radio moderator saying Seto's name suddenly caught his attention.

_"…Mr. Kaiba was admitted to the Domino city hospital last night, but there has been no public statement from his brother and business partner Mokuba Kaiba with regards to what he's being treated for, though an inside source cites stress from a recent scandal involving an article in local gay magazine Out Loud as a possible ground for his hospitalization. Kaiba Corp representatives declined to comment._" A second announcer chimed in.

_"Isn't he a little young to be suffering from a work induced heart attack? He just turned twelve or something, right?"_ The female announcer tittered before giving a joking response and moving on to the next item. During the news story both Alistair and Ryou had frozen in place, Ryou looking concernedly at Alistair who was staring at the radio, his stomach suddenly completely unsettled and the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. Seto was never sick, and even if he didn't feel well, he'd never go to a hospital, not voluntarily anyway.

"What do you suppose happened?" Ryou asked, placing a hand on Alistair's shoulder.

"I don't know," Alistair replied slowly, though he had a guess, and it was causing his stomach to lurch even more uncomfortably. "I have to find out though." He hurried back to the bedroom to retrieve his cell phone.

"Of course." Ryou's voice was so soft that he wasn't even sure Alistair heard him.

After fishing his phone out of his jacket pocket, Alistair speed dialed Mokuba, but it went straight to voicemail, then he tried Roland with similar results. Next he tried Trudy's home apartment number which went through.

"What happened?" he asked with neither preamble nor formalities, but Trudy knew perfectly well who it was. She'd been thinking about calling him herself, but hadn't quite decided whether or not it would be appropriate. She was glad to hear from him though.

"Oh, Alistair," she started, still thoroughly shaken by the ordeal. "It was awful! There was so much blood…" Alistair thought he might be sick. Blood?

"What do you mean blood? What happened?"

"You don't know? I would have thought that that would be on the news this morning, but I didn't watch it. Perhaps there is such a thing as respect for privacy after all…"

"Trudy! _What happened_?"

"I went up to his room to see if he was hungry because he hadn't come down to dinner even though for the first time since you left he seemed better. I opened the door and he was sitting at his desk, and I thought he'd fallen asleep, but something didn't seem right somehow. The way he was sitting didn't seem normal." She inhaled sharply and Alistair could tell she was holding back tears. "And as soon as I stepped into the room properly I could smell blood and then I saw it dripping off of his hand onto the floor." At this point she really did start to cry. "There was so much of it, I thought for sure he must be dead, and he was so pale. I've never seen a living person's skin look like that." Alistair sat down heavily on the bed, feeling the blood draining from his own face.

"He'd slit his wrists," she said in a voice that was just above a whisper, confirming Alistair's fears. "I didn't know what else to do so I called an ambulance. I had to tell Mokuba, but how do you tell someone that the person they care most about in the world has tried to kill themselves? I've never seen anyone so upset. When the ambulance arrived I was afraid they'd have to load Mokuba onto it too. He wanted to go to his brother, but I wouldn't let him."

Alistair was sickened by how clearly he could picture Seto doing it. It was as though he'd been there himself. He could see the tortured yet grotesquely calm, almost happy expression marring the beautiful features.

"He's going to be ok though, isn't he?" Alistair demanded.

"I don't know," Trudy replied helplessly. "I wasn't allowed to go with them; I am, after all, just his housekeeper. I told Mokuba to call me if there was any change, but he was so traumatized I'm not sure he heard me. I wouldn't blame him even if he did but forgot.

If Seto recovers I am going to have some things to say to him. He had no right to put that child through this! He really had no right to put that boy through a lot of things, but this, this is completely crossing a line. He knew that he was everything to Mokuba!" She was starting to become hysterical and even though he still felt horribly queasy, he wanted to comfort her.

"Do you want me to come over?" he asked.

"Please do." She was crying again. "George is visiting his sister and won't be back until this afternoon. He offered to come home yesterday, but there were no more flights by the time I called him. I hate being in this place all by myself. It's horrid!"

"I'll be there soon, just make sure that you're at the gate to let me in."

"Alright. And thank you; I really don't want to be on my own; last night was dreadful! I hardly got a wink of sleep."

Alistair felt sick as he got off the phone with Trudy. While he'd been sitting around eating chips with Ryou and his friends, Seto had been sitting at his desk with blood dripping down his wrists. While he'd been having sex, the brunette had been dying.

Nauseous, Alistair sat down heavily on the mattress, pulling his knees up to his chest and resting his forehead on them. This was his fault. If he had called he could have demanded that Seto speak to him and forced him to understand that he had not betrayed him.

Ryou stood in the hallway, not sure if he should attempt to comfort Alistair or not. He couldn't help but resent Kaiba for once again coming between the two of them. He had thought that _maybe_ Alistair was starting to get over the sapphire-eyed CEO. Clearly not. He selfishly wished he had not told the redhead to turn the radio on.

Sewell came up behind him and rubbed against his legs until he picked her up. Ryou pressed his back against the wall and let himself slide to the ground with the cat still in his arms. He pressed his cheek against her soft multi-colored fur. _Why am I always so unlucky?_ he thought to himself. _It's not fair._

* * *

It took Alistair ten minutes to pull himself together enough to feel comfortable driving. He walked out of the bedroom and into the living room where Ryou was sitting on the beanbag chair with Sewell in his lap. Ryou didn't ask him what had happened to Seto, for which Alistair was grateful because he wasn't sure he'd have known what to say.

"I'm not sure that I'll be back here before I have to go to work," he said as he pulled on his trench coat and stuffed his wallet and motorcycle and house keys into his pocket.

"That's fine. I was planning on making tacos for dinner, should I save some for you?"

"Um, yeah," Alistair answered distractedly.

"Alistair." The redhead turned to look at Ryou, giving him his full attention for the first time since he'd heard the news.

"Yeah?"

"He's very lucky to have someone who cares about him as much as you do." Ryou did not look at Alistair as he said this, but continued to look down at the cat on his lap. Had the statement come from anyone else, Alistair's inclination would have been to assume it was made out of jealousy, but what he knew about Ryou led him to believe that it was longing that was the source. Ryou wished that he too had someone who loved him the way Alistair loved Seto.

"Ryou…"

"You'll never be over him, will you?"

"It's been _two weeks_; you have to give me some time. It's not like I can flip a switch and suddenly stop caring about him; it doesn't work like that no matter how much I wish that it did. I'm sorry that I'm making it seem like I'd drop everything for him even though we aren't together anymore, and I'm not sure I can explain to you why he's so important to me even still, but I have a bad feeling that he's in the hospital because of me which is why I need to find out exactly what happened. I need the closure so that I can be everything that you deserve." Ryou wasn't completely convinced, but he was terrified that if he said anything more he'd go too far and cause Alistair to leave him. And now that he'd had a taste of what it felt like not to be lonely, he hated the idea of being alone even more than he had before.

Ryou looked so sad that Alistair almost decided not to go to see Trudy after all and to stay with Ryou until he was able to ease the Brit's melancholy. He could see clearly now that it had been a mistake to pursue Ryou so soon after splitting with Seto; it wasn't fair to either of them. But he couldn't undo it, so he resolved to redouble his efforts to put his love for Seto behind him after this. But since this was his fault, he couldn't just ignore it.

"I hope he's alright," Ryou said, breaking the silence that had fallen between them even though he didn't quite mean it.

"Me too." Alistair wasn't sure that, given the circumstances, it would be appropriate to kiss the Brit goodbye, so he awkwardly waved and took his leave.

"I'll never be first choice, will I?" Ryou said sadly to Sewell after Alistair was gone, absently scratching her behind the ears. She purred loudly and licked his hand. Of course she had no idea what the human was saying, but he fed her and rubbed her head and that was enough for her.

* * *

The engine of Alistair's red motorcycle roared loudly as he shot along several narrow side streets that acted as a shortcut to the highway. His emotions were all over the place. He thought of Seto lying in a bed in just about the last place on earth he'd want to be; a hospital. Was he conscious, or did they have him on some kind of sedative? If he was awake, what was he thinking about? Was he happy that his suicide attempt had failed, or angry? Had he left a note? If he had, had he listed _him_ as the reason? How was Mokuba?

As he began speeding along the highway his thoughts shifted to what Ryou had said: _you'll never be over him, will you?_ If he were to be completely honest, Alistair had no idea what it would be like to be 'over' Seto. He could barely remember a time before him.

Not too long ago the laptop that he'd gotten from Dartz had been full of thousands of photographs, videos, and scanned newspaper clippings of Seto Kaiba. He'd had pictures of him taped up on his wall at the Doma headquarters like some overenthusiastic fangirl. He'd taped those same pictures to targets when he practiced shooting. Kaiba had been the driving force behind his every thought, his every action, and his only desire had been to make the brunette suffer and suffer horribly.

Given his constant and unrelenting obsession with Seto he should have known better, after all, he'd watched Seto for years, and yet he had chosen to ignore that the object of his rage did not deserve it. Only when he realized that was he able to see Seto for who he really was, and that was when he'd fallen in love with him.

Their relationship had been dysfunctional, though looking back Alistair couldn't fathom why he'd thought the things they argued about had been so important.

Seto had represented stability and safety; two things he'd desperately been searching for. He hadn't realized before he met Seto just how much he wanted someone to lean on. After acting as caregiver and protector to Mikey, then burying his grief because he had no one to share it with after Mikey was killed it had felt so nice to finally have someone's arms to fall into.

But that was over. He was with Ryou now. He was only allowing Seto back into his life for the sake of comforting Trudy and Mokuba, and for closure. He needed to know that Seto would be ok, just as the brunette had done for him so many times. He would never forget how the CEO had risked his life to save him.

* * *

As she'd promised, Trudy met Alistair at the iron gates that acted as the only official entrance the Kaiba estate. To both of their surprise, he was still authorized to open the gate; Seto apparently hadn't told Saito or Kanzo to strike him from the database.

"I'm so glad to see you," she said as soon as he'd parked his motorcycle and taken his helmet off. She pulled him into a hug. "It's really unsettling being in this place by myself, especially right now. The police wouldn't let me clean the blood up you know. Until Seto wakes up and they can confirm that it was a suicide attempt and not attempted murder they're considering his room a crime scene. It's all taped off and everything."

"So he hasn't woken up yet?" She shook her head.

"After I got off the phone with you I called Roland who was at the hospital this morning apparently and he told me that they're keeping him sedated until he has enough blood circulating or something along those lines." Even though she looked pale and tired, she didn't seem quite as upset as when Alistair had spoken to her earlier.

"Do they know why he did it?" Alistair asked tentatively, afraid to hear the answer. Trudy knew what he was thinking. It was what they'd all been thinking.

"He's had a hard life," she started. "The thought of you betraying him was just one thing too many. That's what I think anyway. But it isn't your fault. You didn't make him do this; this was his choice."

"I can't believe that after everything we've been through together he was so easily able to turn on me." Resentment crept into Alistair's voice. "He's unbelievable. He thinks _I_ betrayed _him_? He should take a long look in the mirror! Drawing his own conclusions without even bothering to hear me out is so _fucking_ typical of him!" Trudy drew back as Alistair continued to rant, his face contorted in anger. "This time he's given me every reason to hate him! He can burn in hell for all I care!" He ran out of steam and suddenly found himself holding back tears. Would he ever be able to stop crying? Trudy's brow creased in concern and she wished there was something she could say that would make him feel better.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Two things:

1. I love Joey to pieces, truly, and I'm not trying to write him like a jerk or an idiot, but he's not a very subtle guy, and is oftentimes a tad abrasive even if his heart's in the right place.

2. Ryou. One of my main issues with Ryou in fanfiction is he's written as being very bland and one-dimensional. My goal is to keep his sweetness, but give him some real emotion too, and depth, hence the resentment and the jealousy that almost anyone would feel in this situation.


	17. The Last Place You Want to Be

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!, but I like to think that Takahashi would be on board with how I've handled his characters.

* * *

_"I've Kept It Inside Much To Long_  
_There'S No Relief_  
_Carry It Around Just Like A Stone_  
_Too Heavy For Me_

_I Had Paid The Price_  
_Of Standing On The Outside Looking In_

_It's Time To Let The Healing Begin."_

_~Let the Healing Begin,_ Joe Cocker

**Chapter 17**

_Damn_. It was the first conscious thought that popped into Seto's head when he woke up. He was still alive. After allowing this fact to sink in for a few moments, he still couldn't tell if he was more disappointed or relieved. On the one hand, he felt like a failure, unable even to kill himself properly. But then again, after years of being bombarded on all sides by talk of destiny and fate he couldn't help but feel that maybe he hadn't been _supposed_ to die; maybe he still had some kind of purpose left to serve, unlike his stepfather whose suicide attempt had succeeded.

All that aside, he had to admit that now at least he was feeling _something _even if he wasn't quite sure what it was.

Because his attempt had failed, he was now stuck in a hospital, one of his least favorite places on the planet which, after a moment of more general reflection, caused him to start to feel claustrophobic, though he simply didn't yet have the strength to full out panic.

He was going to be expected to give explanations now that he was awake . And he'd also have to live with Mokuba knowing just how weak he truly was.

He tried to sit up, but even the small exertion caused him to feel light-headed and he immediately lay back down again. It was enough motion to get Mokuba's attention. He hadn't left Seto's side since the ambulance had come for him the night before despite the raised eyebrows of several hospital employees. Not that any of them were really going to verbalize their objections to a distraught fifteen year old acting, for all intents and purposes, as Seto's guardian; no one wanted to get in a tangle with the Kaiba family.

Mokuba had been sitting in a chair beside his brother's bed playing a handheld video game when he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. He quickly set the game aside.

"Seto!" Seto flinched at the sudden loud noise; his head felt like it might split, which he gladly would have let it do if it would relieve the horrible pressure.

"Not so loud," he croaked, his mouth and throat horribly dry.

"I'm sorry." Mokuba lowered his voice. Then he burst into tears and flung himself across his brother's chest. "How could you do that to me?" he wept. "You're supposed to always be there for me! We're supposed to be a team!" Seto didn't know what to say. It hadn't occurred to him that he might survive; he'd thought he'd cut deeply enough that that wouldn't be possible, so he had never come up with a plan of how to explain why he'd done what he'd done to Mokuba.

Still, he instinctively reached up to put a comforting hand on his brother's shoulder. The next question Mokuba asked was the one he didn't want to answer.

"Why? Why did you do it? Was it because of _him_?" Seto realized then that Mokuba hadn't gotten his note meaning he hadn't been the one to find him which was a relief.

"No, it wasn't because of him."

"Then why?" Seto was spared the necessity of responding when a passing nurse noticed the flurry of movement through the doorway and entered the room holding a clipboard. As soon as Seto saw it his heart sank. He wished that he was still unconscious; he really hated hospitals.

"Mr. Kaiba," the nurse addressed Mokuba brusquely. "Please pull yourself together or I'll have to ask you to leave. Your brother is far too weak for that kind of excitement."

"I can decide that for myself thanks," Seto said reproachfully, struggling into a sitting position and causing Mokuba to let go of him. "Now give me that so I can fill it out and leave." The nurse, whose son was a fan, knew exactly who Seto Kaiba was and was more than familiar with his demeanor from when her son watched his Duel Monsters matches on TV. She'd also dealt with several attempted suicide patients before and was therefore used to the anger and guardedness that many of them used to cover up their shame and vulnerability.

"I'm afraid that won't be possible, Mr. Kaiba," she told him evenly. "You have to stay here until at least tomorrow. You lost quite a lot of blood, you're underweight, you have a fever, and it says on your chart that you're supposed to undergo a psychiatric evaluation before you can be discharged do to the nature of your injuries."

"You can't keep me here!" Seto's tone, though authoritative, contained a hint of desperation.

"It's alright," she told him reassuringly, her maternal instincts kicking in when she realized that the young man was truly frightened. "We're here to help you get better. I won't bother you with this chart right away, but when I come back later I need you to try to answer some questions, ok?"

"Fine," Seto said resignedly, crossing his arms.

"Do you need anything? Are you hungry?"

"No." But just then his stomach growled loudly.

"I'll go get you something. You don't have any food allergies, do you?"

"No. And can you tell someone to get these out of me?" He indicated the tubes that were attached to an IV in his arm.

"I'd have to ask the doctor, but I'd guess that the answer is no, at least for now."

"Fine," he repeated. He lay back down and turned away from her and she knew that she wouldn't get any more information out of him and left. As soon as she was gone, Mokuba, who in the meantime had taken the nurse's advice and calmed down, put a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Get me out of here Mokuba," Seto said without looking at him. "There's no way I can spend the night here." Hospitals always brought him straight back to the day of their father's accident and left him feeling tense and unsettled. He hated the strange sterile smell, the stupid posters on the walls, the constant humming of the monitors, the drip of the IV. But most of all he hated the people that worked there. The nonchalant way the nurses treated the people they dealt with, the way the doctors talked down to their patients; as though they were nothing more than children, and he hated their lies. Everyone at the hospital had told him that their father would be alright, but he hadn't been. It was exactly the same with their mother four years before. Seto couldn't remember that incident as clearly given that he'd only been four when his mother had died in childbirth, but he had very vivid memories of the night his father died.

Mokuba had fallen asleep in his seat in the waiting room, but Seto, then nine, had been unable to relax and had sat up with his aunt and uncle. A nurse, not unlike the one that had just talked to him, had emerged from the depths of the hospital and the three of them had stood up. She'd told Seto to wait with Mokuba while she talked to 'the adults.' Seto had known exactly what that meant and had started to cry, demanding that she go away as though if she didn't say out loud that their father was dead it would keep it from being true.

Mokuba knew exactly why waking up in a hospital was causing his brother to panic, but there was very little he could do about it. Had he been of age he might have had a say, but as it was, his opinion didn't mean much to the hospital staff.

As he tried to comfort him, Mokuba couldn't help but be reminded of why Seto was there in the first place, particularly when his eyes strayed to the thick bandages wrapped around both of his brother's wrists. If he hadn't slit his wrists over Alistair, why _had_ he done it? The fact that he had no clue made Mokuba sad. He'd thought that they told each other everything, but thinking back he realized that while _he_ had no secrets from Seto, Seto didn't often reciprocate the dialogue unless he deemed his thoughts necessary enough to articulate.

The teen realized that he'd been horribly selfish for never asking Seto how he felt about things or making any effort to carry his own weight, merely relying on his brother to take care of everything. Maybe if he'd taken more time to try and been as attentive as Seto always was this wouldn't have happened.

* * *

Several days after his admission to the Domino City Hospital, someone leaked details of Seto's condition to the press, including that it was the result of attempted suicide.

Despite trying to keep this particular piece of news from his brother, Seto eventually found out and demanded that the leak be found so that he could sue them into oblivion. His yelling had prompted the nurse in charge of the ward, Carmella, to threaten to sedate him if he didn't calm down. He'd sat back in his bed and crossed his arms, glaring at her. Suddenly being under someone else's thumb did not sit well with him. He had become so accustomed to being in charge over the years that having his demands ignored was something he was hard pressed to cope with.

His temper was so volatile that it was a matter of hours before everyone working in the ward dreaded being called on to deal with him and often defaulted to passing on information via Mokuba. When he wasn't at the office, Mokuba was sitting at his brother's side or running errands for him.

On the second day, the doctor had deemed Seto well enough for visitors and Seto had had to endure talking to two police officers who wanted to confirm that it had in fact been a suicide attempt.

_"__Yes,"_ a still feverish Seto had answered.

"_And you can confirm that you wrote this,"_ one of the officers presented him with his handwritten suicide note.

"_Yes_."

_"__This is your signature?"_

_"__No, I just wrote out a whole letter and had someone else sign it." _

_"__Mr. Kaiba, we need you to answer these questions for our records."_

_ "__Of course it's my signature!" _

_ "__And you wrote this of your own free will?"_ Seto had sighed in annoyance.

_"__Yes."_

Satisfied, the officers had left, promising at Seto's prompting, to send him a copy of their report.

Roland had been his next visitor, coming bearing numerous messages from the various department heads, the most urgent of which came from PR. After a lengthy phone call with the PR department manager, Seto had agreed to release a statement to the press after turning down almost a dozen offers to appear on local and national talk shows. The statement, much of which had been written by someone else which explained how glaringly artificial was, essentially downplayed why he was in the hospital, and emphasized the fact that he was still very much in charge of things, still calling the shots, and that business would continue as usual.

* * *

The psych evaluation was the worst part of the hospital experience in Seto's opinion. He'd gone into it knowing that he had to convince the psychiatrist that he was fine, but at the same time tell them as little as possible.

When he first met with Dr. Coleman, they ended up spending a good third of the session in silence. Seto refused to be the one to start talking, and it was her policy to wait for a given patient to feel comfortable opening up, though based on his very protective and closed off posture (arms and legs crossed) she could tell that that might take a while. Eventually she was the one to give in.

"I know that you don't want to talk to me."

"Wow, you've really got me figured out." She frowned.

"This might seem like a punishment right now, but it doesn't have to be. And as you know, nothing that you tell me will leave this room."

"Unless you think that I'm a danger to myself or others."

"That's true."

"Look: what do you want to know so I can tell you and get out of here; I have a company to run; I don't have time for this."

"What makes you think you don't have time?"

"The longer I stay away, the more opportunities everyone else has to screw something up."

"So you think that you're the one thing standing between your company succeeding and failing?"

"Of course. I built Kaiba Corp and no one else can run it as well as I do."

"That must be stressful."

"I can handle it." Seto's voice was confident which contrasted with the thick bandages still encircling his wrists. Dr. Coleman recognized it for the false bravado that it was.

"Let's say that you could leave here right now. Would Kaiba Corp be the first place you'd want to go?" The question took Seto aback. He was inclined to say yes, but as he thought about it he realized he didn't know where he _wanted_ to go, just that Kaiba Corp was where he probably _would_ go. He didn't want to go home because there was nothing there that drew him to it except maybe Trudy's cooking, he didn't have any desire to take a trip anywhere in particular, nor was he compelled to go to work. Unwilling to admit that the question had thrown him, he answered that yes, the skyscraper was where he'd go.

"So you'd want to jump right back into working?"

"Kaiba Corp doesn't just run itself." It was something he'd said dozens of times; it was his go-to response to that kind of a question.

"What does running Kaiba Corp do for you?" He rolled his eyes at the stupid question.

"It's my livelihood."

"Yes, but why are you so passionate about it that it's the first thing you want to go to when you leave here?" Again, her question threw him off.

"It's my life." This time his voice wasn't as confident. She noted the undercurrent of confusion.

"And how did it coming under attack recently make you feel given that?" He sighed in irritation. 'How does that make you feel' questions were by far the most tedious.

"Annoyed, obviously."

"Maybe a little bit more than annoyed?" He tensed, then narrowed his eyes.

"If you're suggesting that that stupid article is what landed me here than you must not have a very high opinion of my strength. Things like that hardly bother me; they just create more problems for me to solve."

"So what did 'land you here'?" It occurred to him that she'd probably read his suicide note and therefore had known all along that stress from work wasn't why he'd done it. He wondered how many people had read that letter, and none of them the one person he'd intended it for. He was angry about his privacy being invaded like that, but knowing that that letter was the basis of her analysis of his depression was something he could use to get himself out of there.

"I've always been a hard worker," he said, suddenly much more willing to talk. "I've had to be in order to provide for my brother."

"Since you were thirteen, right? After your step-father passed on?" He wanted to roll his eyes again at her use of the phrase 'passed on' given that Gozaburo had thrown himself out of the conference room window only to splatter onto the pavement below.

"Yes."

"That's a lot of pressure to put on a kid."

"I didn't have a choice. It was either that, or have him shipped off to foster care which I would never do. Mokuba is everything to me."

"Not Kaiba Corp?"

"Kaiba Corp is just a tool that I use in order to ensure my brother's future, but I realized recently that at some point I lost sight of why I was working so hard." Even though he was just trying to tell her what she wanted to hear, he couldn't help but at least acknowledge to himself that there was a lot of truth in what he was saying. "Not that this is Mokuba's fault," he added quickly.

"And whose fault is it?"

"Mine."

"What makes you say that?"

"Oh I don't know, maybe the fact that I'm the one that slit my own wrists?" He knew he ought to keep his sarcasm in check, but if she was going to insist on asking stupid questions…

"What were you hoping that would accomplish? What were you searching for?"

"I didn't want to do it anymore, simple as that. Mokuba doesn't need me anymore so I serve no further function."

"So you believe that your existence depends on him needing you?" Even Seto had to acknowledge that that sounded pretty melodramatic.

"Not anymore."

"What do you think now?"

"That losing my parents at an early age and being abandoned by everyone I'd ever known led me to develop an unhealthy dependence on Mokuba. But I think I'm past that."

"Just like that?"

"No, but I'm working on it," he lied, glancing at the digital display on her watch when she wasn't looking. He had less than fifteen minutes to get her to sign off on his psych evaluation or else he'd be stuck having to come and see her indefinitely. He knew he was looking at at least six sessions and a prescription for anti-depressants as it was, not that he intended to actually take the pills.

"What are you thinking about doing to remedy this 'unhealthy dependence?'"

"Spending more time apart, finding friends I guess, reminding myself that just because my family abandoned me that doesn't mean everyone will; that kind of thing." He could tell that she was unconvinced.

"Why do you think finding friends is important?"

"It's what normal people do."

"You don't consider yourself normal?"

"I've been the CEO of a major corporation since I was thirteen years old; of course I'm not normal."

"Do you think that will make it difficult to make friends?"

"Maybe. Probably."

"Where would you look, work?" This time he did roll his eyes again.

"There's no one there that's worth my time; they're all idiots." He regretted saying it as soon as the words left his lips because he knew what her follow-up question would be, but not how to answer it.

"Ok, not work. So where?" Seto had only the barest concept of what people his age usually did and therefore wasn't sure what the proper response would be.

"I don't know, maybe the mall or a club or something."

"Do you play any sports?"

"Not team sports; I don't do the 'teamwork' thing."

"Why is that?" It was time, he decided, to insert another 'this is what she wants to hear' statement.

"For the same reason I don't make friends; everyone I've ever been close to has abandoned me. _I'm_ the only one I can rely on. Which brings me nicely back to the real question here: why did I do it? Mokuba's almost an adult and without him I wouldn't have anyone left, and the way I see it there's no point in going through life alone." Again, though he only said it to get her to sign off on his release papers, there was quite a bit of truth behind his words, which she sensed.

"How long have you felt like that?" she asked, her expression one of concern.

"A while."

"Is there anything that triggered that do you think?"

"Well, my parents dying and then getting cast off at an orphanage by my relatives when I was nine years old probably didn't help."

"No, I imagine that it didn't." There was a pause in the conversation. Seto had had just about enough of being psychoanalyzed.

"Look: the bottom line is that I'm not going to try this again. It was a really bad decision that resulted from being under a lot of pressure at work, and I acknowledge that trying to kill myself was selfish and I shouldn't have. End of story. So could you just write out the prescription and be done with it?"

"Why do you think it was selfish?"

"Enough! I know you read my letter, so stop asking me questions you already know the answers to!" He hadn't meant to lose his temper, but the hum of the air conditioner and an almost imperceptible occasional flickering of the fluorescent light were getting under his skin, though not nearly as much as her probing questions. Why should he be forced to bear his soul to someone who didn't know or care about him? She was probably just over there thinking about her next paycheck. He knew he would be if he were forced to sit and listen to people's problems all day.

"I did. Do you want to talk about it?"

"No, I _don't_ want to talk about it; I want to leave!" He even flexed his thigh muscles, gearing to do just that.

"What are you afraid of? I'm just here to listen, not to judge."

"But you _are_ judging me; that's your job."

"No, it's my job to help you." Even as she said it, she knew she wouldn't get him to talk anymore that day. Still, she felt as though she had a fairly good idea what the root of his insecurity was. "We only have a few minutes left," she said finally. "And this is what I think. I believe that you won't try to kill yourself again, however I am going to suggest that we continue to meet, at least for a while. And this doesn't have to be permanent, but I do think that anti-depressants would-. " He had figured as much.

"Fine." Before she had the chance to dismiss him like some kind of underling, he got up and left without a backward glance. "Have the prescription sent to my home address."

He found out he would be allowed to leave as soon as someone came around to check on his stitches; the physical therapist he'd seen that morning had already signed off after he'd demonstrated that he did in fact still have the ability to walk and run despite having practically starved himself and done little more than sleep for two weeks.

When he first got back to his room he noticed a strange look on Mokuba's face, as though the teen were thinking hard about something, but when he asked, Mokuba said that he'd just been thinking about some argument he'd gotten into with his girlfriend, Hilary.

That wasn't true, however. While Seto had been with Dr. Coleman, Alistair had stopped by and Mokuba had been contemplating what the redhead had told him since he'd left.

* * *

Alistair had decided that the best way to check on Seto would be to go to the hospital under the guise of a nurse. Stealing the uniform hadn't been hard given that the hospital stored spare uniforms in a very remote and unsupervised ward, namely the coma ward. The door to the closet hadn't even been locked. He'd simply hunted around for a set of scrubs that fit moderately well, written out a name tag using Valon's name as an alias and followed the signs to where he knew Seto's room was from having hacked into the system.

It had been ridiculously easy and no one had stopped him but a few visitors who asked him questions about where certain wards were to which he'd replied that he was new and didn't know. The only time he'd gotten nervous was when he'd entered Seto's ward, but he ran his lines through his head again and steeled himself before stopping by the nurse's station so as not to raise suspicion.

"Excuse me?" he said to the grumpy looking older woman sitting at the desk.

"Yes?" she replied wearily. She could tell that the young man was new and wasn't particularly in the mood to deal with a jittery intern.

"Dr. Swanson, my supervisor, told me to come up here to get some paperwork from Seto Kaiba. He was in the middle of something and couldn't do it." Her expression turned sympathetic.

"Oh. His room's right down the hall, but good luck getting anything from him without a fight; it's like pulling teeth. I don't blame Carl for not wanting to come up here." That sounded like Seto. Alistair was glad that he was behaving normally.

"That bad?"

"They say doctors make bad patients, but this kid is way worse because he thinks he knows everything when he actually knows nothing. And he's always complaining about something. It's too hot, it's too cold, he wants to be alone, he wants everyone at his beck and call. I've never met someone so bratty in my entire life. I swear: someone needs to give him a good smack." Alistair couldn't help but laugh slightly.

"Well, I don't know if I should _smack_ him, but I'll keep in mind that getting those papers won't be easy."

Alistair had thought long and hard about what he wanted to do. He'd finally decided that he didn't actually want to talk to Seto, nor was he sure that Seto would even talk to him, but Mokuba he felt, might. His plan had been to wait until the schedule on Seto's digital hospital file placed him out of the room and then go and talk to Mokuba who he was sure would nonetheless be there.

To his relief, his hunch had been correct.

When he entered the room, Mokuba had looked up from his phone only to do a double-take when he realized who had just walked in.

"Alistair?" he asked in disbelief, taking in the sea-green scrubs the redhead had on, and his name tag which read: Valon Johnstone.

"Hey."

"You shouldn't be here."

"I know he's still mad at me."

"No, _I'm_ mad at you, _he_ was hurt by you and tried to kill himself over you." Mokuba found himself glaring at Alistair, his overall stance very reminiscent of his brother. "But he's getting better so please leave." He pointed to the door. "I don't want to go through this again."

"Just hear me out. I didn't come here to talk to him or even to see him; I came here to talk to you. I just want to know if he's ok, or going to be ok. I _know_ that this is probably my fault, and I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if he had died." Mokuba searched Alistair's face for some sign that he was insincere, that he was only back to stir up more trouble, but as far as he could tell the redhead was actually worried. He slowly uncrossed his arms.

"He's ok. I mean, he's acting like himself again for the first time since you left, but he's not acting like the person he was when you two were together if that makes sense. More like how he was before that and before he met Yugi.

Since being here he's just been really angry, but I'm hoping that's just because he's at a hospital and that once we get home he'll chill out." There was a pause. "Where are you staying?" the teen asked suddenly. "Cuz you know, if you need some money…"

"I don't need your money; that's not why I'm here. But thanks for the offer," he added. "I'm staying with a friend of mine." He hesitated before giving his roommate's name. "Ryou Bakura."

"You're friends with Bakura?"

"Yeah. We met at the library."

"You never mentioned that you two knew each other." Mokuba's tone was suddenly suspicious, and he crossed his arms again.

"I'm friends with _Ryou_, not the dark spirit that possessed him," Alistair replied firmly. "But given your brother's stance on magic and the fact that the spirit, while wearing Ryou's face, kidnapped you, I decided that mentioning that we were friends might not go over so well." Mokuba let the new information process before responding.

"That's probably true."

They chatted for a bit longer before Alistair took his leave lest Seto come back from his appointment and catch him there.

Upon leaving the hospital (after returning the scrubs to the closet he'd gotten them from), Alistair took a deep breath and exhaled. It was not a sigh of relief at not having been caught, or for having accomplished his goal; it was an attempt to physically and symbolically let go of the chapter of his life that had revolved around Seto Kaiba. Of course it wouldn't really be as simple as that, but he hoped that now that he'd made sure that Seto was alright (though he wished he could have seen him) he could begin to truly detox and eventually be completely over him, and he wished the same for Seto with regards to _him_.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Take a deep breath. No, I didn't kill Seto off; that would just be mean. Besides, this isn't Game of Thrones. In any case, Seto is now going to have to learn how to live with his demons, and Alistair is going to have to make a choice.


	18. Byzantium

**Disclaimer:** There were too few club scenes in the anime for Yu-Gi-Oh! to be something I own.

* * *

_Take my hand and lead me out_  
_into the night_

_Follow me into a new sunrise_

_Cherry kisses upon my tainted skin_  
_Flying high to a new adventure_

_~Modern Lover, _Cinema Bizarre

**Chapter 18**

**Two Weeks Later**

"I can't," Ryou insisted. "I don't even know how to dance; I'll look like an idiot."

"No more than me," Alistair countered. "Come on. We don't have to stay long, but it's a good experience. I don't even like being around people for the most part and I managed to have fun when I used to go. It's the last weekend before school starts; let's end it with a bang!"

There was, however, a deeper meaning behind why he wanted to take Ryou to the club. He hoped that by taking him out, he could help convince the Brit that he wasn't the freak that he was so certain people saw him as. That it was in his head. And he also rather missed the flashing lights, the _thumpa thumpa_ of the pounding music, the stomping of hundreds of feet, and the feeling of being a part of something, even if that something was nothing more than a sea of colorful, intoxicated, gyrating young adults.

His one trepidation was seeing Darren there, but he'd finally decided that even if he did, Darren would no doubt actively avoid him, but if he was stupid enough not to for whatever reason, he figured telling the man to rot in Hell would be enough to get rid of him.

Ryou finally agreed to go with Alistair to _Byzantium_ because even though the idea of being around so many people made him nervous (a leftover phobia from his time with the dark spirit of the Ring), he wouldn't have to face them alone; Alistair would be there with him.

"I don't even know what to wear though." Alistair couldn't quite keep a small smile off his face at Ryou's distress.

"There's not a dress code."

"I know, but that almost makes it worse. If there _were_ a dress code I would know what to wear and what not to…"

"If it helps narrow things down, my suggestion would be to not go with your sweater vest or that weird robe thing."

"Well of course not; that's just for when I go to the cemetery." Visiting the local cemetery was one of Ryou's quirks that Alistair had yet to figure out. All Ryou ever said about it was that he enjoyed ingesting the 'energy' and 'the wisdom of all of the people from times past' that was present there. "Here, what about this?" He got off the bed where they'd been lounging for the past half an hour and retrieved a white long sleeved shirt. Alistair knew that Ryou wouldn't wear anything that wouldn't cover the scar on his arm or else he would have said that at a club like _Byzantium_ less was more.

"That's fine," he said after Ryou had pulled the shirt over his head. He marveled for a moment over just how fair the Brit was. The white of the shirt did nothing but emphasize the paleness of his skin and hair and cause the darkness of his eyes to pop in contrast. He put Alistair in mind of a dove, the featheriness of Ryou's hair rounding out the comparison.

* * *

When they arrived at the club an hour later and walked inside after paying the cover and made their way into the mass of people crowding both the dance floor and the bar, Ryou grabbed hold of Alistair's arm, not so much out of fear, but as a means not to get separated from him as he took in his surroundings.

_Byzantium_ appeared to comprise of two floors and a bar. The main floor also featured a small stage and two stripper poles against which several young men were dancing wearing nothing more than jean shorts.

"Do you want to dance, or do you want a drink first?" Alistair shouted over the music.

"Ehm…A drink." Alistair nodded and led the way to the bar. After presenting his ID he ordered a beer. Ryou chose a fruity, alcohol-free cocktail.

"It may not get me drunk, but at least it tastes good."

They were lucky enough to find seats at a small table overlooking the dance floor.

"What do you think?" Alistair asked.

"It's really good," Ryou replied, taking a second sip of his drink. "It's mango and pineapple."

"I meant: what do you think of _Byzantium_," Alistair laughed.

"Oh." Ryou took another look around. "It's really loud, but the music is catchy I suppose."

"So you'll dance with me?" Ryou made a face.

"I'll try, but I don't know if I want to do _that_." He pointed towards the men dancing on the poles.

"Don't worry: that's not a requirement and I don't think I will either."

After finishing their drinks, Alistair offered to go back to the bar to retrieve the deposit on Ryou's glass before going to the bathroom. He was only gone for a few minutes, but in that time several people came up to Ryou either asking him to dance or if he wanted to hook up with them.

Once he was back, Ryou told Alistair about the men who'd approached him.

"I can't believe you're surprised."

"It's just, I've never thought of myself as good-looking before."

"You just wait. There's a guy here who's always trying to get people to work for his porn site and I bet that he'll ask you."

"To be in a porn movie?" Ryou looked and sounded incredulous. "You're making that up. People don't just come up to other people in clubs and ask them something like that."

"You'd be surprised. He even asked me the first or second time I came here. He said that I'd make a lot of money if I used the stage name 'Rossi Red' and let him market me as exotic."

"No, _really_?" Ryou put his hand over his mouth and giggled into his palm.

"True story."

"Are there any other weird people that come here?"

"I haven't been here often enough to say for sure, but if there's one I'm sure there are others."

"Do you know if he actually gets people to be in his movies?" Alistair shrugged.

"Probably."

"Would you ever do that? You know, be in a porn movie."

"No. You?"

"Of course not. It would be so weird to know that a bunch of blokes you've never met, or necessarily want to meet, wank off to you getting shagged."

"Careful Ryou: your British is showing."

"Oh hush!"

"I didn't say that that's a bad thing." He leaned across the table to give Ryou a kiss. "Now come on, let's go dance."

"Alright, but you'll have to show me how."

Hand in hand the two walked down the three steps that led from the bar to the dance floor. As they made their way into the center of the crowd, Ryou noticed that numerous people took notice of them, and though at first that made him uncomfortable, by the time they'd reached their destination he was quite proud to be on the arm of someone that so many people found attractive.

"So what am I supposed to do?"

"Just listen to the beat and move. That's all everyone else is doing." Ryou watched on as Alistair began stomping his feet and moving his body in time to the pounding bass of the music and then tried to imitate him, but felt horribly silly and laughed.

"I can't."

"Come here." He put his hands on Ryou's hips and Ryou wrapped his arms around Alistair's neck and allowed the redhead to move them both to the beat and occasionally twirl him around.

As Alistair had predicted, the shady pornsite solicitor approached the pair while they were taking a break from dancing and leaning against the wall.

"I remember you," he told Alistair. "Have you thought at all about joining my team?"

"Not really."

"Are you sure? You could make a lot of money with a face like yours, especially if you were willing to let some of my tops cover it in cum." Ryou couldn't keep himself from giggling, and the man turned his attention to him.

"I haven't seen you before, what's your name?"

"Ryou," Ryou replied, trying to compose his face.

"Ryou huh?" The man appraised him closely. "Can you deepthroat?" Ryou's eyes widened.

"I beg your pardon?"

"There's nothing hotter than watching an innocent-looking twink swallow a huge cock. I'm sure my clients would agree and you could make some good money too."

"I'm not really interested, thank you." The man's eyes lit up suddenly.

"You have an accent. Where are you from?"  
"I'm from England."

"That's even better. You could play a tourist who gets lost in the wrong part of town or something like that."

"Um, no thank you."

"Are you sure? I could turn both of you into stars. You're turning down a great opportunity. If you go with another company they may not appreciate you as much…But if you're sure…"

"We'll think about it," Alistair told him. "Ask again next time."

"I'll hold you to that."

"Ok."

"Oh my god," Ryou said as soon as the man was gone, turning to Alistair. "You weren't kidding. That was so weird!"

"I'm telling you: he's here all the time."

"Do you suppose he even really has a website?"

"Oh I have no doubt. Granted, he probably runs it out of his basement but…"

"I just can't imagine going up to someone and asking them something like that, especially something like 'can you deepthroat' with a straight face as though it's a completely normal thing to do."

"For him it is."

"But does he honestly think that saying something like that is going to make me want to work for him? Or what he said to you?"

"Evidentially." Ryou shook his head in disbelief.

* * *

They stayed at the club until almost two in the morning before deciding to call it a night and beginning the thirty minute walk back to their apartment.

"So what did you think?" Alistair asked, swinging his and Ryou's hands back and forth as they crossed the street.

"It was fun. Not something I'd want to do all the time, but every once in a while. It was quite a workout as well; I can tell that I'll be sore in the morning."

"You're welcome to join me when I go running to help build up your stamina."

"But that's so much work!"

"It's just two miles."

"As I said: that's _so_ much work!"

"I guess you'll just have to get a workout some other way, huh?" He grinned slyly.

"I guess so," Ryou agreed, smiling and biting his lower lip. He'd never thought he'd ever get to a point where he could be happy again, but since going to the hospital to check on Kaiba, Alistair had done nothing but make Ryou feel special. He only hoped it would stay that way.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Consider this chapter a direct contrast to the relationship that Alistair and Seto had, and also as an excuse for me to include a funny anecdote from my own clubbing experiences.

As far as Ryou's concerned, going out with Alistair gives him the opportunity to sort of reintigrate into society, much like Alistair had to himself after first going to live at the Kaiba mansion.


	19. Breakthrough

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!, but as long as I'm allowed to write fanfics about it I'm alright with that.

* * *

_"If you can't love yourself, how in the Hell are you gonna love somebody else?" _

RuPaul, _RuPaul's Drag Race_

**Chapter 19**

After mulling it over for a month, Mokuba finally decided to follow-up on his gut feeling about Alistair. It was clear to him that Seto, despite what he said, and despite the fact that he was back at work, wasn't alright. Ever since waking up at the hospital his demeanor had completely reverted to how it had been following Gozaburo's death.

He'd dutifully changed the policies that he'd promised he would, and to the relief of everyone much of the hype surrounding the _Out Loud_ article died down, but instead of taking the opportunity to perform more reforms, Seto elected instead to work his way through every department and fire anyone that he didn't consider up to par. To take their places, he instructed the department managers to advertise at the university.

To most people the change in Seto was imperceptible, but Mokuba could tell that though he was up and about and going through all the motions that indicated that it was business as usual, his brother was still not over the loss of Alistair, and he hadn't repaired his Duel Monsters locket either and instead kept it in his wallet for when he needed it to unlock certain doors at Kaiba Corp. Mokuba wondered if he still kept Alistair's picture in it, but didn't dare ask.

At home (when he came home) Seto was completely listless, speaking only when spoken to, and even then only giving short responses.

He spent much of his time at the development lab working tirelessly on the virtual reality pods he'd begun several years previously. They were mostly complete, but he wanted to make sure to tighten up the security and safety features on them after the 'Big Five' and Noah had managed to compromise them twice.

He tested everything himself, spending increasingly longer amounts of time plugged into the system to make sure that there were no bugs.

Mokuba found it troubling, but at first he hadn't been sure what to do about it. After talking to Alistair at the hospital he'd been convinced that he hadn't in fact betrayed Seto, or at least not in the way Seto thought he had. And the fact that he had come at all led Mokuba to believe that he still loved the brunette. The younger Kaiba had had issues with Seto and Alistair's relationship in the past, but he ultimately decided that he'd rather share Seto than have him act the way he had been for the rest of their lives and had therefore resolved to try to prove to his brother that he'd been wrong about what he thought Alistair had done.

He'd thought about going directly to Alistair, but had decided that would be a bad idea; there was no way Seto would agree to talk to him, and even if he tricked him into doing it he wouldn't listen, so he'd decided to talk to the reporter girl instead to find out what she had said to Seto and how she knew about it.

Getting her address had been easy, and this was the day he was going to go talk to her.

* * *

Britney was more than a little surprised when she opened her door and saw Mokuba Kaiba standing on the doorstep.

"Hi," she said awkwardly, not sure how to address him since 'Mokuba' seemed too familiar, but addressing him as 'Mr. Kaiba' seemed far too bizarre given that he was easily five years younger than her and still a kid.

"Hi Miss Whinnery," Mokuba replied. "Could I come in for a minute?"

"Um…sure." She opened the door a bit wider and stepped aside to allow him to enter the apartment. "Can I ask what this is regarding?" she asked after sitting him down on her and her boyfriend's couch and offering him a coffee.

"It's nothing official," Mokuba said quickly.

"Oh." She would have asked him how his brother was, but decided that might be too invasive of a question, especially since it easily could have been her magazine article that had landed him in the hospital in the first place. When she'd first heard that Seto Kaiba had slit his wrists she'd felt horribly guilty. While she did believe in social justice, the whole 'Operation Kaiba Corp' had been more or less a game to see if she and her friends could stir up some trouble for them; she'd never imagined that it would have the impact that it had, and she definitely would have reconsidered the whole thing had she known how deeply it would have cut the young CEO.

"I just want to know what you said to him at your meeting. He won't talk to me about it and I'm worried about him." She felt an immense sense of relief. This wasn't about her article after all—it was about Darren.

"I didn't really say anything to him. But if you want to know what my friend told him you'd have to ask him; I wasn't in the room."

"Your friend…Darren Wiley, right?" She nodded.

"And look: I didn't want him to tell your brother that we knew about Alistair; I thought that that would be inappropriate, but Darren didn't listen to me. He told me that he didn't like Kaiba's attitude and to wipe the smirk off his face he revealed that he knew about that, but I'm sure he wouldn't have said anything if he would have known what would happen," she added quickly.

"I believe you," he said after thinking it over a moment. "Could you tell me how I could get in touch with him?"

"Of course."

* * *

After leaving Britney's house, getting back in the car and telling Alfred to drive him to Eska Uedo's office, Mokuba immediately called his brother's lawyer.

"I need to speak to Mr. Uedo right away," Mokuba told his secretary. "Tell him it's Mokuba Kaiba."

"Mokuba?" Uedo said after taking the call. "Did Mr. Kaiba and I have a meeting scheduled?" He sounded nervous.

"No. In fact, he doesn't even know I'm calling."

"What can I help you with?"

"Could you have a confidentiality agreement drawn up for me?"

"Of course, but why?" Mokuba didn't want to talk about it in front of Alfred, so he said:

"We can go over the details when I get there. I'm on my way to your office. Do you have time for me now?" Uedo knew that he had an appointment soon, but Seto Kaiba was his most important client and he couldn't risk damaging their relationship by denying his brother face time.

"Absolutely."

"Good. I should be there in ten minutes."

Upon arriving, Mokuba was escorted to Mr. Uedo by his secretary who looked like she could be Mai Valentine's older sister.

"Sorry for springing this on you out of the blue," Mokuba apologized, taking the seat in front of Uedo's desk.

"Not a problem," Uedo replied, flashing his overly bleached teeth. "I have the forms pulled up, so I just need you to give me a few details."

Over the next forty minutes Mokuba specified the parameters of the agreement. Finally, Uedo printed and signed two copies of the document, but stopped Mokuba before he could follow suit.

"With all due respect, if I understand what you told me correctly, by interrogating this young man under the protection of this agreement you would ruin the chance for Mr. Kaiba to sue him for damages."

"I know my brother and he wouldn't want this information to go to court, believe me." Uedo was deeply curious to know what it was that the Kaiba brothers were working so hard to keep secret and wondered if it had anything to do with what caused Kaiba to attempt to commit suicide, but his professionalism prevented him from asking.

* * *

After their first few sessions (which had been a complete waste of time in Seto's opinion), Dr. Coleman had become much more direct with her questions, sensing that her usual gentle prodding was only serving to close Seto off further. He appreciated the change. He loathed having to go see her, but the visits were made slightly more bearable without her metaphors, loaded questions, and head games.

"We've talked about a lot of stuff," she commented, eliciting a smirk from Seto. 'Talked' implied that it had been a two way street when for the most part he'd either said nothing at all or fed her the crap he knew she wanted to hear. "We've touched on your parents, your relatives, your Duel Monsters career and your brother, but today I want to talk about something completely different."

"Oh joy." He rolled his eyes.

"First of all: did you try out any of the things we talked about last time?"

"Yes, I did. But only because I had to."

"You don't _have_ to do anything."

"Yeah right. Anyway, I tried playing a non-competitive game. I put a puzzle together."

"And?"

"It was boring."

"And what about the team game?" He thought back to the tedious game of two on two basketball he'd played with Roland, Saito, and Kanzo two days previously. Since he'd been younger than all three of them by at least ten years he wasn't sure it really counted since he hadn't needed Kanzo in order to win, but he wasn't going to tell her that.

"Basketball. And let's just say that I don't think I'm cut out to be a 'team player.'"

"What was it that those two games lacked for you?"

"Putting a puzzle together is pointless. It doesn't take any skill whatsoever; a child could do it. And as for basketball: while the game itself could be interesting, I didn't like it because no matter how well I play, if my teammates screw up we all lose the game."

"A puzzle may not require skill, but didn't you at least experience some kind of satisfaction after you completed it?" He would be lying if he said no. The puzzle had been comprised of two thousand pieces which, when combined, formed an image of the Blue Eyes White Dragon. Upon putting the final pieces in place after laboring over the puzzle for over an hour and a half, he'd looked down on the completed picture with a twinge of pride at having created order out of the chaos. The completed puzzle was still lying on the floor in the drawing room.

"It was boring, like I said."

"But surely finishing a new invention, like the remarkable jet-pack you told me about, must fill you with some kind of satisfaction."

"That's different."

"But it's not competitive."

"Look: I never said that everything I do has to be competitive or else I don't care about it, you did. I could have told you that and spared myself from such a pointless task!"

"The purpose that puzzle served was to show you that the same fulfillment you feel after completing a project can be found in other areas of your life that aren't related to work. As far as playing a team sport-."

"You wanted to show me that being part of a team can be just as gratifying as working alone," he cut her off. "Well, it didn't work; I still hate the idea of teamwork. The only person I can rely on is me. I want my victories to be mine, and I want my failures to be mine. End of story."

"That leads nicely into what I wanted to discuss today."

"Oh really?"

"Can you think of any exception to your general 'anti-teamwork' policy?" He could tell by the tone of her voice that he wasn't meant to have an answer and he was nettled to discover that he didn't. He sighed in irritation, suspecting that she had some kind of 'outside the box' response.

"No."

"What about love?" He hadn't expected that and found himself unconsciously tightening his jaw. He did not want to talk about that.

"What about it?" She mentally noted his complete change in demeanor. Before, he'd been very blasé, almost uninterested, but at the mention of love his relaxed posture had gone rigid and his eyes had hardened. She knew she'd have to tread lightly.

"You tell me. What do you think about it?"

"I think it's pathetic and useless!" he spat before he could stop himself. "And anyone who believes in it is a fool!" She tactfully remained quiet and allowed him to continue to rant. It was the first uncalculated response she felt she'd gotten from him the whole time they'd been seeing each other. It led her to believe that they were at last getting to the heart of what had led Seto to slit his wrists that night, and perhaps also to who the person the CEO had referred to in his suicide note; the one he'd claimed was not the reason he wanted to end his life, was.

"Love is for losers who can't make it through life on their own and need someone else by their side in order to validate their own self-worth!

Love is a lie since no one actually really does love anyone else: they just use each other but call it love in order to romanticize their selfishness!" He clenched his fists as he thought about how Alistair had used him in order to make himself feel better about the death of his family. "I would never waste my time on something like that," he finished, glaring at his own fists as more memories forced their way to the front of his mind. _At least, not again_, he added to himself.

"That's a pretty extreme position." Seto suddenly remembered where he was and quickly shrugged his mask of indifference back into place.

"I'm an extreme kind of guy."

"Can I ask you something?"

"That's your job, isn't it?" She decided to switch topics.

"Do you believe in hate?"

"Of course." He narrowed his eyes in an attempt to pinpoint the relevance of the question and he decided it was a deflection tactic. An attempt to lull him back into a chatty mood.

"Do you hate anyone?" His thoughts immediately went to Gozaburo, but he refused to talk to her about him. However, he couldn't really say 'no' without having to deal with a bunch of naggy follow-up questions so he cast around for a scapegoat.

"Yeah."

"And why do you hate this person?"

"He's a loudmouthed jumped-up deadbeat who relies on luck and his more talented friends to get himself through life, yet he has the audacity to walk around with his head held high as though he isn't in fact a worthless mutt that society could do without." Ridiculing Wheeler had, since they'd first crossed paths, become a guilty pleasure of his, so using the blonde as a means to avoid talking about Alistair or Gozaburo was fine by him.

"That certainly doesn't sound like a very pleasant person, but why do they bother you so much personally?" Every once in a while Dr. Coleman asked a question that actually made him think, and this was one of them. Why _did_ Wheeler and his stupid happy-go-lucky attitude get under his skin so much? All he knew was that every time he saw him he wanted nothing more than to tear into his self-esteem until he reduced him to a puddle of self-loathing.

Why did Wheeler get to be happy? He hadn't earned it. His life had been easy thanks to his stupid group of friends always babying him.

No one had ever done that for _him_. _He_ had earned everything he had through hard work and perseverance and never once relied on luck, yet even though he had done more than Wheeler ever would, he was unhappy whereas Wheeler always, despite all the insults he had thrown at him, had a smile on his face.

One incident stood out to him in particular: their unofficial duel after his humiliating loss to Yugi in the Battle City semi-finals. He'd been so angry throughout that whole duel, the sting of his defeat still fresh. But what had gotten to him more than that, was how carefree Joey had seemed despite having lost his own shot at victory, even going so far as to say that Seto was taking their match too seriously and that he ought to try to have fun instead of focusing on winning.

Seto had blown the statement off, as he always did, but it had really pissed him off. Wheeler should have been completely crushed after Seto wiped the floor with him, but he hadn't been. Even though he'd emerged from that duel the victor, Seto had walked away feeling like a loser thanks to Joey's genuine good sportsmanship.

"I hate him because despite the fact that he's all the things I said before, and that in a few years no one will even remember his name, he's content. He knows that he's nobody and he doesn't care. I have everything and he has nothing and yet he's happier than me!" He almost added 'it's not fair', but stopped himself short of actually saying something so childish.

He knew that by telling Dr. Coleman all of this he was giving in, but he didn't care anymore. He was sick of their game of cat and mouse; of always trying to dodge her probing inquiries in order to maintain some level of control. She already knew that he wasn't perfect, the whole world did at this point, and he thought that maybe, possibly, she could help him. If he was going to be forced to live anyway there wasn't any harm in trying to make his life a little more bearable. Didn't he deserve at least that much after everything he'd been through?

"Do you want to be happy?" He was silent for so long she was sure he wouldn't answer, but then he met her eyes, his strikingly blue irises seeming to pierce right through her.

"Yes."

The conversation went much more smoothly after that and for the most part he gave her real answers, though he stopped short of divulging anything he found to be too personal. She was grateful that he was finally willing to talk to her because she did feel as though she could help him; she'd already made several conjectures that his words were now confirming. Because of his unhealthy fixation with winning she'd assumed that he had probably been pushed by either his biological parents, adopted father, or both, to always be the best and told that anything less wasn't good enough. The fact that he'd been cutting himself for some time supported this theory.

His line about only being able to depend on and trust yourself seemed equally likely to come from one of his parents given that he didn't appear to actually feel that way, particularly with regards to his brother.

"Before you go I just want to touch on one more thing."

"What?" he asked warily.

"Clothes."

"Clothes?"

"They say a lot about a person, wouldn't you agree?"

"I suppose."

"What do you think your style says about you?" He glanced down at his usual all-black ensemble, black boots, his gauntlets, and his white trench coat.

"That I have good taste and don't want to look like anyone else." She eyed the spiky straps on his boots and shirt, the hard metal of the gauntlets, and the studs on the collar of his jacket.

"If I saw you walking down the street and someone asked me to describe your clothes I think the word 'armor' would come to mind. Do you agree with that?" He thought about it. As soon as she said it, he knew exactly what she was talking about.

"I wear these," he tapped one of the gauntlets, "so that my shirtsleeve can't roll up and reveal the scars on my wrist."

"Very practical," she agreed. "What else? Do you think that you look approachable?" He almost laughed since the last word he would have used to describe himself would have been 'approachable.'

"Probably not."

"Well your jacket would make it pretty difficult to stand right next to you, wouldn't it? It kind of keeps people at a distance, doesn't it?" Again he felt that she'd made an interesting point.

"Most of the time."

"I think you get where I'm going with this. This physical barrier that you've put around yourself, this armor if you will, represents the mental armor you have up, warning everyone to stay away. And they do, don't they?"

"For the most part." She looked at him expectantly. "There is one person who, no matter what I say, calls himself my friend."

"Why do you think he does that?"

"I have no idea." He'd never understood Yugi's determination to befriend him. "I've hardly done anything nice for him."

"You must have if he considers you a friend. We're out of time for today, but think about it and we can pick this back up next time. If you're such a horrible person, why would he want to be your friend despite having already been rebuffed by you?"

As he was driving to Kaiba Corp headquarters, Seto pondered the question he'd been posed. Why _did_ Yugi insist that the two of them were friends? He was nothing like the members of the Geek Squad. He wasn't a cheerleader or a team player. He didn't even particularly like Yugi, though he did respect him, but clearly Yugi saw something in him that was likeable, else he wouldn't insist on calling him a friend. What was it that Yugi could see in him that he couldn't even see in himself?

* * *

**Author's Note:** One of the things that I find really annoying about love stories is that both character's happiness always seems to depend on each other. I think that Seto deserves a little better than just that. I want actual happiness for him, happiness and self esteem that come from within himself, not from someone else.

Also: I took the opportunity to include one of my main headcanons. I think that Seto was so quick to look down his nose at Joey and take every opportunity to ridicule him because he was secretly jealous of him to a certain degree.


End file.
